Many hunters know how valuable beaver meat is to the human body. And how to cook it properly, they knew back in the eighteenth century. In those days, it was very popular to cook sausages from this animal. Today , beaver dishes are not so popular in cooking, but in the hunting kitchen you can find a lot of recipes for this rodent. So, before we begin to consider these recipes, let's talk about the benefits such meat brings to a person.
A few words about the delicacy
Since the beaver, the photo of which is attached, eats only plant foods, its meat is very valuable. It is lean, contains many minerals and vitamins, has healing properties. In many countries, dishes from it are delicacies, especially gourmets delighted with them.
Beaver meat tastes like turkey and pork, it is juicy and tender. But the animal must be properly carved, cutting out the musk gland, otherwise the meat will acquire a specific taste and become stiff. The whole animal can be used as food, its tail is especially valuable: it is boiled, fried, first courses are prepared. Since meat has fatty veins, when it is cooked, it acquires a delicate taste, since fat melts rather slowly.
How to cook beaver correctly, we will consider further.
Barbecue in the nature
To cook this dish deliciously, you need to properly cut the animal, cut it into portions. Use the whole carcass except the ribs.
Ingredients: beaver carcass. For the marinade: six onions, three tablespoons of vinegar, salt, lemon juice, ginger and caraway seeds to taste, one glass of water, olive oil.
So, the beaver is butchered by carefully removing the musk gland. The pieces are soaked for one day in cold water, periodically changing it. The skin is removed from the tail, excess fat is removed from the surface of the pieces. Then the meat is washed well and marinated for about six hours in a pre-prepared marinade. To do this, rub onion on a grater, add vinegar, salt and spices, water, stir everything and pour pieces of carcass, cover with a lid and set aside.
A solution of vinegar is prepared in the same way as for a regular barbecue, while its quantity should be such that it covers the meat completely. If the beaver is not young, they pickle it for longer.
A dish is prepared in the traditional way: pieces of meat are strung on skewers or laid on a wire rack, put on the barbecue and fried for at least fifty minutes, periodically sprinkled with lemon juice. Beaver meat tastes like chicken and pork, there is no specific smell in it, it is quite juicy and tender.
Beaver Tail Soup
So that the tails of the animal do not disappear, from them you can cook an unusual, but quite tasty and satisfying soup.
Ingredients: four beaver tails without skin, one spoonful of ground pepper, two tablespoons of salt, one large onion, one cup of rice cereal, four liters of water.
Cooking:
Tails are pre-cleaned of skin, cut into pieces, soaked in acetic solution. To do this, they are placed in an enameled pan, pour one cup of vinegar, add enough water so that the pieces are completely covered with it. Leave to marinate for one night.
Before you prepare the beaver’s tail, they take it out and rinse it with cold water, then put it in a pan, pour water and boil it. After boiling, put rice, chopped onions, salt and spices, cook for half an hour. Before cooking, you can add parsley or celery and a few tablespoons of tomato sauce to the soup.
How to cook beaver in the oven
Ingredients: one carcass of beaver, one hundred grams of fat, one lemon, three onions, three carrots, eight potatoes, fifty grams of butter, one head of garlic, salt and pepper to taste. For the sauce: one spoonful of fat sour cream, one bunch of parsley.
Cooking:
Beaver is soaked for one night in a solution of salt and lemon, cut into rings. Over time, the meat is chopped with lard with garlic. The prepared product is spread on a baking sheet. Then pour it with a solution of melted butter, two tablespoons of salt and half a spoon of pepper. A baking sheet is placed in a preheated oven and baked for one hour. After twenty minutes, add one glass of cold water.
Ten minutes before cooking, the meat is taken out and vegetables are cut around it, cut into large pieces. You must not forget to water the remaining time with the resulting juice.
Sauce making
We learned how to cook beaver meat (recipes are very diverse and unusual), consider the algorithm for preparing the sauce. So, in the prepared dishes, pour the juice from the baking sheet, add sour cream, chopped garlic and parsley. The mixture is set on fire and brought to a boil. Ready sauce is poured over meat and vegetables, which are previously laid out on a large dish. Garnish with parsley or celery.
Beef Stew with Vegetables
Ingredients: four hundred grams of beaver ribs, one lemon, one onion, two carrots, one apple, three tablespoons of butter, one head of garlic, five branches of thyme, one hundred grams of sour cream, salt and pepper to taste.
Cooking:
Before cooking beaver meat (recipes were provided to us by experienced chefs), it is necessary to thoroughly rinse, dry and cut into small pieces so that each has a rib. Peel the garlic, chop finely with a knife half. The lemon is washed and cut in half, squeezed juice (it should turn out one glass). Put meat, garlic, lemon juice in a glass bowl, mix everything well. Then add salt and spices, cover and leave for six hours in the refrigerator.
Meanwhile, carrots are peeled and cut with wheels, onions are cut into eight parts. Three tablespoons of oil, onion are sent to the preheated pan, and fried until golden, then sprinkled with salt and pepper.
Roast
Vegetable oil is poured into a large cauldron, it is heated strongly, then pieces of meat are laid out and fried on all sides to a golden crust. Then add carrots and fry for ten minutes. After that, they also put onions, mix and stew for fifteen minutes. Next, chop the apple and the remaining garlic in large pieces and add to the casserole along with one and a half glasses of boiling water. Ten minutes extinguish it. Then chop the thyme, put it in the vegetables and fry for another five minutes. Over time, add sour cream and simmer for twenty minutes over low heat. Ready beaver meat, the recipes for which we are considering, is served with fried potatoes.
Beaver roll
Ingredients: two tablespoons butter, two and a half kilograms of beaver meat, one spoon of ground pepper, one spoon of citric acid, three cloves of garlic, one protein, one kilogram of dried apples or plums, six bay leaves, salt and spices to taste.
Cooking:
Before cooking beaver, the meat is cleaned of all bones and beaten, rubbed with a mixture of pepper, citric acid, chopped garlic and salt. Beat the protein well until a firm foam is formed. Washed and dried dried fruits are mixed with protein and spread this mass on the meat in an even layer. Then roll the roll, tie it with twine, grease with butter, sprinkle with salt and spices and put on a baking sheet, where a small amount of water is poured, add a bay leaf. The product is baked for an hour and a half on a small fire, periodically pouring it with the resulting juice. The roll is taken out of the oven, a load is placed on it and cut into circles, which are laid out on a dish and decorated with greens. It should be noted that the filling can be different, it all depends on the imagination of the cook.
Fried beaver tails
Ingredients: two beaver tails, ground pepper on the tip of a knife, half a cup of vinegar, fifty grams of vegetable oil, as well as one spoon of salt, ten grams of sugar, fifty grams of table wine, twenty grams of soda, four grams of dry mustard, fifty grams of flour, one spoon Worcestershire sauce.
Cooking:
Before you prepare a beaver according to this recipe, you need to clean the tails well from the skin and rinse. Then they are put in the dishes, poured with vinegar and left for one night. The next day, the tails are washed and poured with soda solution (two tablespoons are taken per liter of water) and boiled for ten minutes from the moment of boiling. Then the water is drained, the tails are dipped into flour and fried on both sides.
Wine, mustard, sauce and sugar, as well as minced garlic, are mixed, added to the tails and fried for ten minutes on low heat.
Some tips
Beaver meat has a slight smack of aspen, which not everyone may like. But you can easily get rid of it. The meat is soaked, fat is removed (it accumulates the unpleasant odor of aspen). Of course, many gourmets do not mind tasting meat with forest accents.
Beef Meatballs
Ingredients: one kilogram of beaver meat, two eggs, two tablespoons of sour cream, one onion, one loaf of bread soaked in milk, as well as two tablespoons of butter, two tablespoons of tomato paste, water, herbs, salt and spices to taste, one spoon of flour .
Cooking:
Before cooking beaver (the recipes are quite interesting and simple), you need to rinse and dry the meat, pass it through a meat grinder along with onions. Then they add pressed bread, sour cream and eggs, salt and spices. Stuffing mix well and form meatballs from it, roll them in flour and fry in fat. Then they are transferred to a pan, poured with fat from a frying pan, add a small amount of water and simmer over medium heat. Some time before the end of cooking add tomato paste.
Beaver cutlets
Ingredients: one kilogram of beaver meat, two hundred grams of sour cream, two eggs, one loaf soaked in milk or water, two hundred grams of fat, two tablespoons of flour, salt and spices to taste, two onions.
Cooking:
The meat is passed through a meat grinder along with onions. Sour cream, eggs, roll, salt and spices are added. Cutlets are formed from this mass, they are rolled in flour and fried in well-heated fat, not forgetting to turn over. The finished dish is served with stewed carrots, fruit salad, potatoes, cereals, pickled apples and so on. It is decorated with green onions, parsley or dill, celery sprigs.
Finally ...
Today, beaver meat is not as popular as another animal, but it is a fairly valuable and tasty product. Scientists claim that it is endowed with healing properties, which are determined by the presence of vitamins and nutrients. This product is not infected with parasites, therefore it is harmless to humans. Many today ask about what can be prepared from beaver. From this animal, almost everything is prepared that is made from chicken or, for example, pork. But the taste of dishes is much richer and has some zest. At the same time, the most tender and soft meat in three-year-old animals, therefore, such individuals are used in cooking. It is saturated red in color due to the presence of red blood cells in the muscles. Therefore, such a product will always be fresh and will greatly benefit the human body.
Those who have a variety of kitchen appliances are often interested in how to cook a beaver in a slow cooker. The answer to this question is very simple: meat is cooked in the same way as pork or beef. There are a lot of recipes, which one to choose, depends only on the personal preferences of the cook. In any case, there is nothing complicated in preparing dishes from this animal; you only need to have desire. Enjoy your meal!