To get your own gator requires a whole'nother tackle box and range time.
Posted on 06/13/2011 11:14:47 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Some say it tastes like chicken. Others say you can still tell it comes from a swamp.
The tradition of eating alligator is carried down from Cajuns in Louisiana and is slowly spreading east.
Emerald Coast residents and tourists are venturing out of their comfort zones to taste the critter, but most don’t come back for seconds.
“I don’t think there are many big gator fans out there,” said Jay Carmena, general manager of Destin Ice, which sells frozen gator meat by the pound. “Most people buy it because it’s a novelty.”
The meat has 110 calories per serving and 28 grams of protein, which makes it leaner than chicken.
Gator is sold frozen or in sausage form at some locations. The price ranges from $5.95 to $8.95 a pound.
At Gulf Coast Seafood Market in Fort Walton Beach, the alligator-pork sausage is the more popular of the two.
“I wouldn’t call gator one of the big selling meats,” said Clayton Guessford, manager of Gulf Coast Seafood. “The sausage sells a lot more, though. I think it’s easier to prepare and looks a little more familiar.”
The most popular way to prepare gator meat — which typically comes from the tail — is to fry it. Some sauté and others grill, but Guessford says the frying makes it taste more like chicken.
At one of the newest restaurants in Fort Walton Beach, the Krustee Krabb, owner Bo Knight prepares his alligator like a shish-kabob, alternating pickles and meat.
He then dips both in a hot sauce, which doesn’t quite manage to hide the distinctive taste.
“We try and prepare it so when people have it for the first time they have a good experience,” Knight said as he tossed some chopped chunks of gator meat into flour.
“The weird items sell pretty well because there aren’t many places around here you can get them.”
Tastes like wood.
I’ve had it deep fried. It’s not too bad. The gator sausage idea sounds like a good one.
I’ve had fried gator tail. It was really good.
i had deep fried chunks of gator tail once and loved it.
You ate the dang decoy:)
Alligator does taste like chicken and most Louisianans have eaten it. I like it fried, Cajuns like it in a sauce piquant. It is very lean but a good protein. You can't get it anywhere in S.E. Louisiana but in Cajun country you can pick it up off the road!
Are there any Japanese Cajuns that make gator sushi?
We sell it.
In FL we eat it too.
I’ve never tried it, but most young people I know have.
We have a cajun restaurant here in town. I always get the alligator dinner-”McAlligator” breaded nuggets, hush puppies, dirty rice, and red beans, with a delicious cajun sauce to dip the nuggets in. The sauce is a necessity because without it, the alligator would be...well, bland. Tastes like chicken? Maybe like white meat chicken that’s been marinated in fishy water. Pretty tender, though, and the sauce is great.
There used to be a cajun place around here that had gator tail in a sort of jambalaya — I liked it. Reminded me of a somewhat fishy-tasting pork roast.
I tried fried at a little cafe/shack along the highway between Miami and the Gulf Coast. The taste was ok, but not what I would buy regularly. What I want to know is what those big pythons taste like that have grown in the Everglades since the petstore blew out in Hurricane Andrew. If they taste good, it might be an incentive to cull the population.
Check out way down the menu for Rajin Cajun Sushi:)
http://www.servingsushi.com/CatSubCat/CatSubCatDisplay2.asp?p1=9&p2=Y&p7=2&p8=528&p9=CSC1
I had Gator “nuggets” with a nice Thai Chili dipping sauce Saturday night with dinner. Mmmmmm.
I call it Cushi.
Other people, of course, call it an Emergency Room Visit.
Thanks Bubba. Would you say “That-that’s about it”
... due to conservation regulations the gators have been allowed to multiply exponentially. Southeast Coastal Georgia is over populated with gators — they need to be thinned out.
Alligators are a plentiful, renewable natural resource — why don’t we start capitalizing on it. The pioneers and people at least at the turn of the past century (1900 A.D.) had the gator population drawn down. For the last 60 years nobody much has been killing him and now it’s a safety issue. I look where I step every time I go outside. Let’s thin them out NOW!!! sell their hides to China ...
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