Killing in the kitchen

[Ian_Lee]

This topic may seem disgusting.

But unlike most westerners who buy their food on the dining table from the processed meat and seafood in the supermarket, many Chinese, especially Cantonese, prefer to buy livestock from the market and kill it in the kitchen right before cooking since they think it is more fresh and tasty.

Of course, after the recent Avian flu, now hardly anybody dares kill chicken in the kitchen at home.

But for sea creatures like crab and fish, they are still killed in the kitchen.

Just wonder if any western posters have ever tried killing crab and fish in the kitchen.

[Quest]

Just wonder if any western posters have ever tried killing crab and fish in the kitchen.

People who live by a pond, a lake or a seashore quite often go fishing on holidays. Those live inland hunt ducks and birds. 你认为他们会把这些战利品怎样处置？

[Ian_Lee]

Quest:

I guess most of our fellow western posters are not fishermen.

And even if they are fishermen, they don't know how to handle shellfish like lobster or crab. Since you live in Massachusettes, you can tell how those restaurants in Boston handle the famous lobsters -- Just pour them into a big hot metal pot of boiling water.

Ask your mom how we handle those shellfishes.

For lobster, first stick a chopstick into the tail part and let it get rid of all its urine. Then dissect it right in the center from its belly while it is still alive.

For crab, you separate its hard shell from its body while it is still alive.

[bhchao]

I don't see a problem killing crab or fish in the kitchen. When I was little, my grandmother dumped a whole live chicken into a pot of boiling water. Now that I may have a problem with.

[Ian_Lee]

Actually I have killed frogs in the kitchen. (Frog is a delicacy in Cantonese cuisine.) But the process was so awful that I swore I would never do it again.

[keith]

On English TV in June, I saw Gordon Ramsay kill a lobster in his kitchen (he's a famous chef in the UK). (on the show "Hell's Kitchen")

He just stuck a knife right through its head, then cut it right in half. So westerners (or Brits at least) do kill seafood in the kitchen after all...

[Quest]

Ian Lee, American students kill frogs at their schools' bio labs.

[Claw]

The frogs are usually already dead and preserved in formaldehyde by the time the students get their hands on them.

[beirne]

Lobster is the only animal I can think of that is commonly sold live in American grocery stores. I think a lot of people just drop them into the pot of boiling water. I checked the Joy of Cooking and they also explain how to kill a lobster with a knife for broiling.

BTW, the Joy of Cooking is the standard reference cookbook in the US. Along with potatoes and steak it explains how to cook things like lamb's head and chitterlings, although this isn't common American fare. Blacks sometimes eat chitterlings, but I have never heard of anyone eating lamb's head.

[Jamie]

When I was young my parents raised chickens and seeing my dad chop a chicken head off was no big deal. But all of that was done outside, not in the kitchen. It seems... unsanitary and messy to do that in the house. Do people really kill chickens IN the kitchen?

[Ian_Lee]

Frog killing inside the kitchen was a gruesome experience.

First, you face the risk of frogs jumping around if you kill more than one.

The killing process is easy. You chop off its head, peel off its skin, take out all its internal stuff and wash the meat.

But the most awful scent came at the last part.

After you wash it, you have to rub the dead body with salt to get off the greasy stuff attached to the body.

When you rub the salt, the nerve system in the dead frog was activated.

A headless, skinless frog with 4 limbs jumping around was what you would encounter!

[nazia]

I couldn't resist an adjoinder here though I apologize for its gruesome nature. When I was very little we lived in a place where 'The Chicken Man' would come round with a huge flat wicker basket of full of live chickens balanced on his head - their squawling was all the advertisement he needed. The cooks and housewives would line up outside on the street and after much critical poking and prodding of his wares, they'd each waddle off back into their kitchen with a couple of chickens grabbed by the neck. We had an ancient cook who could barely see, yet managed to expertly wring their necks into silence in a matter of minutes. The next bit however, was the most exciting (for me at the time) - the head would be yanked off, making a kind of popping sound, and then - the headless bird would do a few steps of a faintly protesting jig on the floor before collapsing. To a three year old child the revelation was that all death meant a kind of headless jig.