Horse Meat Sushi?

Published on Thursday, July 5, 2007, by Tea / Edit Post

It’s been all the talk in Japan: With global fishing bodies limiting tuna catch numbers, what to do about sushi? According to an article in Aussie newspaper The Age, “Nightly news programs ran reports of how higher prices were driving top-grade tuna off supermarket shelves.”

The problem is the growing appetite for sushi and sashimi outside Japan, not only in the US but also in such newly wealthy countries as Russia, South Korea and China.

The fishing experts say the shortages and rising prices will only get worse as the population of bluefin tuna—the big, slow-maturing type most favoured in sushi—fails to keep up with worldwide demand.

(Gotta like that last line—as if it is some failure on the part of the fish!)

In Japan, home of sushi, this is cause for great concern.

‘It’s like America running out of steak,’ said Tadashi Yamagata, vice-chairman of Japan’s national union of sushi chefs. ‘Sushi without tuna just would not be sushi.’

But a shortage is a shortage, and sushi chefs are beginning to experiment with alternatives such as raw deer meat and horse meat. Raw horse meat, or basashi, is a regional delicacy in some parts of Japan but generally served sashimi style. Both are red, like tuna, and provide soft meat with little odor.

Having tasted basashi myself, I can say that it is delicious, but I have a hard time imagining it could ever take the place of toro. A horse is a horse (of course, of course), but it’s no tuna.

ALLFood Media
POST A COMMENT |6 Comments

COMMENT

  • Horsemeat is not only tainted with deadly chemicals and has been knowingly exported to overseas consumers:

    http://www.vetsforequinewelfare.org/medications.php

    Animals are in many instances butchered alive:

    http://www.defendhorsescanada.org/ChambersofCarnage.html

    Please don't believe the massive, insidious lies of the horsemeat industry.

  • Both basashi (horse sashimi) and kujira (whale meat) are delicious. Too bad we do not have it here in the U.S. PETA and Greenpeace would have a cow or the soy equivalent.

  • Does anyone know if basashi is served outside of Japan? Does anyone know if it is served in the U.S.?

  • I asked my local horsemeat supplier for some good marbled stuff, but he said all the good bits go straight to Japan. I had some sashimi there as well when i was seeing my grandparents a year ago. They live in an area where they have horse meat traditionally as sahimi. They serve it not with soysauce and wasabi but with a garlicky miso based sauce. The texture was soft but with the garlic in the...+READ

    I asked my local horsemeat supplier for some good marbled stuff, but he said all the good bits go straight to Japan. I had some sashimi there as well when i was seeing my grandparents a year ago. They live in an area where they have horse meat traditionally as sahimi. They serve it not with soysauce and wasabi but with a garlicky miso based sauce. The texture was soft but with the garlic in the sauce you could not really say much about taste. I tried horse bacon sushi as well but the meat seemed not to be very fresh. Another tuna substitute i found in japan was whale sushi. Same red colour with a mix of beef and tuna in flavour.-COLLAPSE

  • "This does not justify the slaughtering of horses."

    And what justifies the slaughtering of other animals for food? Give me a break, please not this "this type of animal deserves to be mutated and eaten but that type is far too superior" discussion. That's not the point of the post.

  • This does not justify the slaughtering of horses.