Throw It into the Fire: Exotic Barbecued Creatures

The barbecue method of cooking has been around since our ancestors discovered fire. It’s beautifully simple: throw a raw slab of meat/fish/poultry/anything else into the fire/embers/hot coals and come up with something tastier, albeit a little charred. Man also learned that by adding things to the raw meat, it would end up tasting even better.

It’s no big surprise that just about every culture has their own “way of the barbecue,” and their choice of foods to barbecue are just about as varied. The standard meaty fare for barbecue would normally be pork, beef, chicken, and fish (the non-weird looking kind), but there are definitely other things that can be thrown into the fire and eaten afterwards:

Rodents

We’re not talking about the ones that are infesting the sewers and warehouses, though (but I’m sure they can be prepared in a similar fashion). There are many species that have been traditionally caught and eaten: guinea pigs, capybaras, and rice-field rats, to name a few. For as long as they’re not subsisting on rubbish, this kind of meat is palatable. You just have to get past beyond how they look...

photo by Victor Englebert