What’s wrong with eating dog meat?

Caramba! Dog lovers all over the world (at least in the US and Europe) are trying to get Koreans to stop eating dogs. They have even enlisted FIFA to step in and put pressure on the Koreans. See the report here:

Imagine what would happen if suddenly these picky people realized that Thais not only eat dogs but also insects!

With over 6,000 restaurants in Korea serving around 1 million dogs a year, it would seem like a really difficult task to keep Koreans from eating dogs. Imagine how much harder it would be to stop Thai people from eating their favorite foods.

Although I had lived in Thailand for about 10 years before marrying my current wife, I had only noticed the Thai fondness for insects from a distance. It wasn’t until my wife and I were married in a simple ceremony at her parents’ home in a small town outside of Ubon that I came close to practicing.

We hired a van to drive there and bring some of our closest friends to witness our union and enjoy a few fun-filled days in the country. I’m not sure what was served at reception because there was too much and we were happily downing a couple of cases of Mekhong whiskey and ‘Lao Khao’, the Thai equivalent of moonshine.

The day after the wedding, my new family, and there were dozens of them, took us to the Moon River for a picnic on floating bamboo rafts. We all sat down anticipating a delicious Bar-BQ and some seafood.

The first course consisted of delicious banana leaves filled with red ant eggs. Hmm. My friends and I spent that moment as we watched my new family settle in with gusto. Then came shrimp dishes swimming in alcohol. These guys were jumping and diving in and out of the concoction. Naturally, this dish was called ‘Drunk Prawns’. Fortunately, they were probably so drunk when they slid down our throats that they didn’t care that they were being eaten. They were quite tasty.

Next came a selection of fried insects, mostly grasshoppers, but I think there were other things in there that looked like cockroaches too. My Thai hosts assured me that these were very clean cockroaches harvested from the rice stalks on their farm. Definitely not my cup of tea, thanks, but the Thais chewed on them with relish.

The first few times I went back it was more or less the same. I must say that my Thai family valiantly tried to serve me food that I could actually eat, but they didn’t really know much about farung food. My staple while there used to be omelettes or white bread spread with margarine and instant Nescafe for breakfast. I never eat white bread or drink instant coffee, so aside from my terrible hunger pangs, it was also an expression of my love for my new family that I actually drank it all down with a smile on my face.

I have since learned to come prepared and always carry a cooler full of UHT milk, a pound of butter, fresh coffee beans and some cheese. I’m sticking with the cheese until the Thais bring out their ‘Pla Ra’ fermented fish. So we both sat there with beatific smiles on our faces as we ate some incredibly stinky food. Hears! Fair is fair, right?

Pla Ra has to be one of the most disgusting foods for us fastidious farungs. It is made by fermenting fish in clay pots buried in the ground. The resulting mess smells as bad as it sounds, but the Thais love it. They pile it on their ‘Som Tum’ papaya salad and laugh every time I run out of the room. I have forbidden my wife and my cousins ​​to enter the house when they eat. They have to eat it outside, where the terrible stench cannot enter the house. I guess seeing an overweight old man throwing up was enough to convince them to heed my banishing order.

I’ve even heard of Thais eating live monkey brains, although I’ve never actually seen it. Apparently, the poor monkey is locked in a device under a table with the top of his head protruding through a hole in the table. Then they take a sharp sword and cut off the crown, kind of like taking the lid off a boiled egg. They put in and take out the brain still alive and eat it. Quite possibly, the reason I’ve never seen this is because many of the diners are rumored to have some kind of terrible stroke and die afterwards. So I guess Karma really works.

I started out talking about eating dogs, and I must apologize for the digression, but you have to admit that eating bugs, drunken shrimp, monkey brains, and Pla Ra is definitely on a par with eating dog.

My first contact with eating dogs was in the Philippines, where it is also a delicacy. The habit may have arisen during the Marcos years when everyone was so poor that they ate anything that fell into their hands. I think there are no monkeys left anywhere in the country either, because they ate them all.

Be that as it may, some of them also love to eat dog. Once, one of my Filipino friends took me to the deepest depths of Negros Island. He lived high in the mountains in a small town miles from anywhere.

The first morning there I got up and wandered outside. There was his beautiful black dog lazing around with a very bad head injury obviously caused by a heavy blow from a blunt object. I called my friend who staggered out (the night before we had been doing justice to a ‘San Mig’ case). He took one look at his favorite dog, growled, went in, and came back with a gun in his hand. He shot the dog right there.

That was shocking enough, but then he picked it up and growled at me to follow him. We went out to a shed at the back of the house where she hung it from the rafters by its hind legs. He cut the skin around the ankles, or whatever you call it, on a dog, made a cut on the chest and belly, and then peeled off the skin. Then he gutted it and began to chop it up.

After the initial shock of seeing what he was doing, I got over my apprehension and asked him what he was doing as he watched. She had recently come from Australia, where all of our slaughtering takes place long before we see the meat on sterile displays in stores.

“We are going to eat it. It’s a shame he’s dead, but one of my neighbors obviously hit him on the head and would have taken him to lunch if you hadn’t come out and scared him. dog?”

When the dog was dressed (it’s weird to use that word when he was actually naked, but that’s the English language for you, isn’t it?), we took him into the house and he made a great curry. When he was ready, he invited the neighbors to a feast and we all bundled up.

What did it taste like? Well, I think it had a strong copper flavor. It was a little hard to tell because of the curry, but it definitely left a coppery aftertaste. The meat was nothing special. It wasn’t hard or stringy, and it wasn’t that tender. It was just meat.

Why did I eat it?

Well, I’ve had snake, crocodile, bear, wild turkey, and kangaroo tail soup, so why not? I wanted to see what it was like. Later, when I returned to Baguio, north of Manila, I also had some sun-dried dog meat, a bit like the dried meat that the Thais serve here. In fact, it tastes very similar, so who knows? Maybe the beef jerky is actually dog ​​meat.

Some Thais definitely like to eat dog meat too. I saw a Thai movie the other night called ‘Khao Niaw Moo Ping’. It was the story of a girl who befriends a stray puppy. The mother dog is caught by dog ​​snatchers who sell her catch at the local dog food market.

So the next time you sit down with your Thai friends and are offered some ‘beef jerky’, you might want to ask them if it’s really beef or one of man’s best friends.