Favorite Mouse Recipes
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How to Survive the Recession with Good Cheap Eats
Recently veteran hubber Ralph Deeds published an entertaining collection of some of the best post-meltdown advice tidbits from Wall Street entitled What Now? Tips from the Experts.
Ralph's hub is great and worth reading for the entertainment value alone (for God's sake don't actually take any of this advice! Just laugh at it.)
For my money, one expert stood apart from all the rest:
The mouse eating guy.
Here's the excerpt from Ralph's hub in which the mouse eating guy holds forth:
- Cody Lundin, survivalist standing outside barefoot in shorts in a foot of snow--"The way I see it, it's all a con game Wall Street has always been an illusion. Now it's an illusion that's crumbling." Lundin advised that I try making a fire with sticks, eating mice and going without electricity for a week "to see where it hurts." Lundin himself eats mice and rats he traps at his off-the-grid passive solar house in the wilderness because "why waste protein?"
Why indeed? It's not like protein is cheap these days.
In fact, hardly anything is cheap these days.
If you've ever seen the 1983 movie Never Cry Wolf then you know that eating mice is not a new idea. In many parts of the U.S. mice are definitely plentiful, even in the wintertime. It hit me that what we really need here at Hub Pages and what we do not have (until now!) is a good collection of mouse recipes.
So here we go.
At First, It Was All a Big Joke
When I thought about writing this hub, it all seemed pretty funny.
I quickly came up with my own short list of smart ass mice recipes:
- Mice Crispies
- Chicken with Mice Soup
- Mice-a-Roni
- Mice Cream
- Mice Pudding
- Spanish Mice
You get the general idea here.
But as I began to poke around the internet I realized that mice and rats are eaten in many countries around the world, and not as mere subsistence fare either.
In China, rats are a delicacy and are served up on certain holidays all over the country. You can buy them at street stands all over China, and people are crazy for them.
Parts of Africa have used field mice as a food source for centuries, if not longer, and even Paris served up rodent en croute to get through difficult patches during the World Wars.(Stew anything in shallots and red wine for long enough and it comes out pretty good.)
The Ancient Romans served stuffed dormice as a regular dish. To prepare Roman Stuffed Dormice you skin and evicerate each mouse, then make a stuffing of pork or mouse meat, a little anchovy paste, pine nuts, and garlic, then sew the body cavities back up and roast in a wood oven on a hot tile.
In Mexico, ordinary field mice are skinned and eviscerated and roasted over an open fire on sticks (kind of like marshmallows). You eat the whole mouse, bones and all. These are sometimes referred to as "salty dogs," and I'm thinking a bottle of good Tequila would hit the spot with these puppies. (Or, a few shots of good Tequila chased with a bottle of rotgut.)
Farley Mowat, the naturalist portrayed in Never Cry Wolf who lived on field mice in the Alaskan wilderness for a summer to prove that large mammals (like wolves) could indeed survive on rodents alone, offers this recipe, developed on site:
- Mice in Cream (Souris à la crème) Skin, gut and wash some fat mice without removing their heads. Cover them in a pot with ethyl alcohol and marinate 2 hours. Cut a piece of salt pork or sowbelly into small dice and cook it slowly to extract the fat. Drain the mice, dredge them thoroughly in a mixture of flour, pepper, and salt, and fry slowly in the rendered fat for about 5 minutes. Add a cup of alcohol and 6 to 8 cloves, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Prepare a cream sauce, transfer the sautéed mice to it, and warm them in it for about 10 minutes before serving.
I'm thinking the ethyl alcohol probably helps a lot with washing that last dish down, not to mention the effects of living by yourself in a big field for months at a time.
Still, the more I read about eating mice, the less repulsive it all sounded.
Check out this quote from Fish, Flesh, and Good Red Herring by Alice Thomas Ellis:
- In 1920 when I was four years old an old woman who lived near my family in Radlett and whom I used to visit on every occasion I could find, would give me sugar mice to eat. These were made by skinning mice, which she had caught in an ordinary mousetrap, emptying them and then tying them by the tail to a wooden spoon where they were suspended into a strong sugar syrup in a cast iron saucepan over a slow heat. After some hours (or days) the mice became crystallised and, when they were cold, she would give me one to eat. They were delicious and even the bones were crisp and edible.
I got to thinking that what we think of as edible and what we think of as disgusting is really a cultural thing, and it's a bit mysterious, how we come to it. Certainly our revulsion toward the concept of rodent cuisine must spring at least partly from our view of the creatures as pests and harbingers of disease and filth. And yet, if you think about it, chickens or pigs would spread disease too if they lived in the city and took up residence in apartment walls.
In countries where mice and rats are more a part of the local fauna, I can see how it would make perfect sense to eat them, especially if they were easy to catch and plentiful when other foods were not.
I have personally met a number of people who will not even taste winter squash, which is one of my favorite foods. Why the strong antisquash sentiment, I wondered? Turns out it was because the word squash was disgusting to these people, putting them in mind of something ugly that had been inadvertantly smashed or killed.
Be that as it may, I doubt I will be cooking up a pot of mice anytime soon. With sugar, without sugar, I think I'll pass.
For now.
But if times get tough enough, I've got recipes!
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Comments
Hi Susan--You know, I'm glad you mentioned dogs and cats here, because I've always thought it interesting that people eat very few carnivores. Those are two of the few meat-eating animals that human beings do eat. I know there aren't as many carnivores--that's part of it--but it's interesting. I remember watching a documentary on the Lewis & Clark expedition and being grossed out that by the time they reached the Pacific Coast they were eating their dogs and horses. They had other food, they just liked meat. Ick!
I mean, why am I okay with eating pigs, cows, and chicken and not okay with eating mice, dogs, and cats? They're all animals, aren't they? :O My brother once had pet chickens and we fried them anyway. Who said which animals were okay to eat in the first place? :O
(I think I'm scaring my cats now. Hehe. :P Oh, I would never eat you, my precious darlings! :D)
UPDATE: Really? It's related to them being carnivores? But horses are omnivores. :O
Grundy, you.... you.... you.... UGHHHH!
Laugh! I could hardly believe this was serious, but then I just slapped myself upside the head -- of course my initial reaction is just a cultural thing... I won't eat cat or ... ants or any other itchy crawling fellows, but they are delicacies, too, in some parts of the world. Oh well, live and learn, eh?
Thought for a second that was a mis-spelling in the title, and we were up for some good mousse recipes!
How about mouse mousse?
Susan, yes, I know what you mean. If I had to kill and gut everything I ate, I'd be a near-vegetarian. I think I could eat chickens, fish--but large mammals? No. And mice? Not yet! lol!
Elena--As you can see, I'm kind of running dry on topics. lol! But seriously, it was joke at first, and then as I looked around I realized, wow, this is, um, a real thing. I learned something! Whoo hoo!
Nana--Mouse mousse. Hmmmmmm....I think if chocolate was involved---lots of it--it could work!
LOL Loved it! Very interesting. I have a very senisitive gag reflex, but my Mama taught me to never say NEVER! ;-) Hope I won't need these recipes, but you never know. Down here people eat nutria rats, some of them say it's really good. "It's all in how you cook it." lol
This was great, pgrundy 9as usual) --both the funny and serious part.
I think I would pass up most of them, like the mousemallows and sugar mice. Maybe if you sugared them and then roasted them on a stick you could make mous'mores.
You know if you had a mouse ranch, raising them for food, it wouldn't take up a lot of space. Most suburban back yards would be plenty big enough.
Haha! Brilliant idea, Rochelle! :D A mouse ranch... I can just picture it. :P
In your first recipe may I suggest just drinking the ethyl alcohol to wash the mice down? Might make the entire idea more palatable. Funny!
Hi mamacoots--Aren't those nutria rats really big? I mean, the less it looks like a rat, I think the less disturbing it is. In South America they eat guinea pigs (cavies). I guess it's pretty common.
Rochelle--I LOVE that! A mouse ranch! Come to think of it, I think I lived in one of those once...
C.S. Alexis--I think that's a good idea. Can you feature a fine restaurant. "Which kind of ethyl alcohol goes well with mice? Should we go with a white or a rose?" lol!
Oh yes, they are huge!(for a rat) They can get as big as a large cat. I'll have to find a recipe for you. lol
Definitely! Although, I doubt I'll run into one up here in Michigan.
It never hurts to be prepared though. :)
You never now when information will come in handy!
Now this is a fun read---very entertaining...The suggested "Cooking With Mickey and Friends" brought the end to a roaring laughter. Thanks for my exercise routine for the day...
There's even a Heart Healthly Crockpot recipe. lol
Thanks Gypsy Willow and Nancy! ;)
mamacoots--That is too funny. Actually though it doesn't look all that bad. I mean, if I didn't know what it was, I'd eat it and probably like it.
My cat is very grateful for these recipes. I think he'd go nuts with joy if I started trapping and cooking mice.
You're absolutely right that food tastes and what's edible is a cultural thing, it relates to what you ate as a kid and what was a treat and what represented deprivation. Mice are mammals and I'm sure the meat just tastes like some variety of red meat.
I think I'm less revolted by the idea than put off by the idea of eating anything with bones in, since I was always the kid that got the fish bones and no matter how much people said they just get ground up when you chew them -- I couldn't chew well enough to keep from choking on them. Debone them and I'd probably have little trouble. I think if I had to eat them for survival I'd probably gut them, skin, dehead and run them into a meat grinder first just to avoid that problem.
I have also always wondered why some cat food company doesn't catch on to how easy it is to breed mice and feed them up. Mice raised for food would not be subject to diseases from eating in the apartment of someone infected with something contagious, they'd take a lot less space than cattle or pigs and even the nastiest conditions for chickens would be spacious for them.
Then considering how cat food is made, with all the meat and meat byproducts ground, dried and pressed, it's not like mouse as an ingredient in cat food would particularly gross out cat owners. But it would do wonders for the health of cats. A cat can live on nothing but mice. Cats eat the whole mouse when they do though, so I wouldn't necessarily gut them if I were preparing them for cat food.
I have seen people who keep snakes inevitably find that their cats go nuts when they bring home mice as snake food. Their cats naturally think it's for them and will go crazier for that than anything else. But they're expensive at pet food stores either frozen or live, probably because of the cost of employees and store rental. Some of the snake fanciers bred their own if they had too many snakes.
Great Hub. The pictures are particularly good. I'd read about Roman dormice, to ancient Romans that was a treat food and very haute cuisine, not something your lower class Romans could afford. Probably because of the amount of work needed to prepare it.
I think that itself may have been why Europeans drifted more to large game than small game. I've noticed there's a serious amount of hassle preparing very small fish too unless they're down around anchovy size and you eat the whole thing, bones and all.
Hi robert,
My cat loves to catch mice but he never eats them. He just plays with them until they have little mouse heart attacks. Usually we take them away from him and let them go outdoors, but sometimes they're already dead by the time he brings them to us, at which point I suppose we could eat them. We don't though. lol!
I've unfortunately ate dog and cat unknowingly (until it was too late) -- although I've seen people eat rats that's as close as I want to get to them (watching). Very entertaining hub.
I'll take some chow mein, and can I have some mouse on the side?
I knew a lady, she's the mother of a high school classmate, that had KFC mouse. Yeah, she found a fried mouse in her KFC bucket of chicken. Which of course was found as she bit into it.
Keep on hubbing!
Mice Crispies! Can I order through you? Extra crispy, please.
LOL @ this whole hub, even where you tried to be serious. Dude, mouse meat!? LOL. Are there like cuts on mouse, you know, the prime-rib and top round? And I can just see a bunch of dudes sitting out in the desert, hitting a bottle of Tequila (mmmm, Tequila), and having some yummy salty dogs. I laughed truly outload at your flip, "some tequila would be great for these puppies," or however you said that. (I do love your writerly voice, but I think I've mentioned that ad nausea, so I won't say it here.)
Oh, and I think Rochelle would make an awesome rat wrangler. She could even have like western themed summer camps to supplement her income, invite people over to experience the thrill of life on the mouse-range (and food prepared on a mouse range for that matter).
(LOL I should write that travel-brochure as a hub, LOL... Crazy Rochelle's Rat Ranch... Come on Down and Be a Rat Wranger Too!) --I'm not going to though, I'm pooped after my last hub. lol
Thanks Shades! I had a lot of fun with this meself. Mice Self. lol!
ROFL bad puns are awesome!
Pam. Ha, ha. I'm not ready for cuisine de mouse, but in an article/recipe I published on another site, I included the following:
"...the oldest cookbook that we have is by Apicius, a Roman gourmet who lived some time around the 2nd century BC to the 1st Century AD. In his cookbook 'Apicius de re Coquinaria', he has recipes for stuffed chicken, hare, pig, and even stuffed dormouse."
Can you imagine stuffing one of those little suckers? Great hub! Hysterical and disgusting...an irresistible combination of flavors!
Hi Christoph! I am most honored by your visit here, I mean that. You know what creeps me out more than the idea of stuffing one of those little things? Skinning one! I mean, that can't be fun or fast...by the time I skinned a mouse exactly once, I'd have my head hanging over the toilet for the rest of the night.
However, if someone else takes care of that part of it, I might try some stuffed dormouse, yum... (No I won't!) LOL!
A couple of good reasons to avoid rodents, carnivores and omnivores - disease. the further up the food chain (in general) the greater the parasite (and prion, I'll come back to that) burden. Quite a number of cestode (tapeworms) parasites that mature in african carnivores aren't particularly far removed from those that mature in us, and the tapeworm of the pig is similar enough to be indiscriminate if someone is unfortunate enough to ingest them. Prions don't NATURALLY spread between herbivores, and so herbivores are normally safe to eat in that respect (but some parasites have a life cycle which involves being ingested from the muscular tissues of a herbivore), but then came Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, because some clever d*** fed sheep and cow bits to cows. Because it seemed like it would be good for them, perhaps?
I'm sure there was something in rodents to avoid - in Coypu, at least. I know that they have particularly wicked looking tapeworms, which probably encyst in humans which is never good. But I'm sure there was something else.
On that vague note, I'll shut up.
disenthused--Yuck! So much for the joy of mice! lol! Thanks for pointing that out though. I mean seriously, thanks!
Susan Ng says:
7 months ago
Just thinking about eating mice is making my hair stand on end and my stomach churn. To me it's on the same level as eating dogs and cats. :O
But it's making me think: What's the difference? They're all animals. Hmm... :O