Kyk nou so vir Vettie

[Tripodmvr]

Stewige bulletjie uit Oz.

[Ds J]

Pragtig.

Nuuskierige navraag: het iemand al waterbuffels geëet?

[oafpatroll]

Pragtig.

Nuuskierige navraag: het iemand al waterbuffels geëet?

Without knowing it many of us have as they've frequently found their way into consignments of imported meat.

[Tripodmvr]

No wonder I have a water problem at night!!!!!!!!

[Treeman]

I ate Cape Buffalo recently, very disappointed .
 I always dreamt of hunting a buff and coming home with a few hundred kg meat. Somehow I kinda thought it would be something "wow !" - like a childhood carried forward expectation from reading Rourke, Hemingway and Wilber Smith.
It was dry, hard and tasted like Kudu bull. The sausage was much, much better, its almost perfectly suited for wors, makes for a very textured old style memory of 60 ties 70 ties wors before industrialized products.
I found the same disappointment when I after 40 years tasted the magical mythical Mead, alcohol from honey - it tasted like alcohol, any other alcohol, the honey was gone.        ya !, Mead was a big let done.

[JamesNotBond]

The expectations of an foodstuff derived from the reading good books is almost always a let down. I have travelled a lot of Europe, the Americas and down under.

American beer is just shite and some of it is even worse.
Australian Vegemite tastes like marmite with diabetics.
Black pudding is not a pudding, imagine that ? Its a sausage made of blood  .
Haggis tastes a little better than it looks, but then again it does look really bad.
Real champagne was a real let down for me, really not that different nor that much better tasting. Of the 3 Champagne cellars I was able to experience from, with tags of 30 -40 euro, one was nice. Two of the cellars were very sharp and dry, the other was rather nice.     

Treeman, from what I gathered in your company and from your posts is that a lot of your world has been seeking out new experiences that you have read about ?

[Ds J]

As a kid we ate buffalo and elephant patties in Satara in the Kruger Park; coarse, but good.

Some thoughts:
- Is buffalo necessarily processed in a game-friendly manner ie hanged out for a week etc? This could explain the disappointment.

- The hunters of old often worked very hard during the day. By nightfall, almost anything would have tastes good. I have also considered that our recipes and tastes have developed over the years. My dad used to hunt blesbok on the Highveld near Carolina as a child, that was their winter biltong rations, together with mutton. That was all they knew and had, so they ate it. To me, blesbuck is not very tasty.

[Treeman]

As a kid we ate buffalo and elephant patties in Satara in the Kruger Park; coarse, but good.

Some thoughts:
- Is buffalo necessarily processed in a game-friendly manner ie hanged out for a week etc? This could explain the disappointment.

- The hunters of old often worked very hard during the day. By nightfall, almost anything would have tastes good. I have also considered that our recipes and tastes have developed over the years. My dad used to hunt blesbok on the Highveld near Carolina as a child, that was their winter biltong rations, together with mutton. That was all they knew and had, so they ate it. To me, blesbuck is not very tasty.

A consideration I often ponder - VERY OFTEN>

[Againstthegrains]

There is a very good reason why beef which is similar to buff in many ways, is graded.

Beef grading works like this:

There is a letter, followed by a number.

The letter ABC denotes the age of the animal as follows, based on dentition (teeth):

A-grade (youngest): 0 permanent teeth (milk teeth only)
B-grade: 2 to 6 permanent teeth
C-grade (oldest): More than 6 permanent teeth

The number denotes the fat content as follows:

0 (Very Lean): No visible fat
1 (Lean): Very little fat
2 (Medium): Moderate fat cover
3 (Slightly Fatty): Noticeable fat cover
4 (Fatty): Thick layer of fat
5 & 6 (Very Fatty): Excessive fat cover

So if you shoot an old buffalo bull in dry conditions, then the animal would essentially be a C0, or C1 in beef terms and is designated as a tough old thing with little eating merit, except for mince and biltong.

So if you want to eat and enjoy a buffalo steak, shoot a young bull towards the end of the rainy season, when the grass is lekker think and it has had time to build up some fat.

[Tripodmvr]

I can remember having a buffalo steak in the train restaurant at Skukuza. Was not tough and tasted quite good.

[Againstthegrains]

I can remember having a buffalo steak in the train restaurant at Skukuza. Was not tough and tasted quite good.

You were obviously served a B3 buff

Or they lied and told you the well aged grade C beef they served you was buff.

A common trick in the restaurants around Kruger to serve poor grade (c, and low fat animals) to tourists as venison. I remember at the carvery at the Protea hotel at the gate, the chef was carving this massive piece if meat that was clearly a single muscle of a big animal (that tasted like tough beef) and was told with the greatest confidence that the meat today was Impala. Yes I replied, "This is an Impala with thunder thighs." I think my brand of humour went over his head like a Boing.