Eating Raw Horse Meat

I don’t know whether or not other countries have the custom of eating horse meat, but yesterday a friend and I went to a specialist horse meat restaurant to eat sashimi and steak (the meat coming from a horse, of course).

It was our first time to visit this specialist horse-meat restaurant. Everything seemed fresh and I was pleased that were no off-putting or unpleasant odors coming from the kitchen. Biting into the horse meat, it was very juicy, and didn’t have any particular smell.

The dish above is called Baniku Yukke (馬肉ユッケ). It’s raw horse meat, served with a raw egg, sesame seeds (ゴマ) and diced green onion (ネギ) which you mix together before eating. I think perhaps this combination might not go down well with many people from the West.

The taste is a soy sauce base, and has quite a sweet and sour feel to it (although this is made milder by the egg).

Still, you can find Baniku Yukke in quite a few places (yakinuki restaurants, for example) so there’s no real need to come to a horse-meat specialist for this dish.

Next up is the steak though. This is real specialist stuff.

Actually, we also ate horse sashimi (no image for this), but the most delicious dish, without question, was the horse steak.

In particular, taking bites out of the chuck plate (チャックプレート) and rump (ランプ) was an exciting eating experience.

Compared to traditional beef steak, there is hardly any fat/gristle on the horse version, and it was surprisingly tender. For us two ladies, it was easy enough to handle.

Anyway, I realized today how nice horse meat can be. And, I hear it has about ⅓ of the calories of beef, so it could be a good option for my next night out with my friend!