• Substance_P@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    88
    ·
    4 days ago

    Hunters take advantage of the field rats’ reliable presence and sell their bounty to local roadside vendors or export it to Vietnam. In Cambodia, sellers cook the rat over charcoal and serve it accompanied by dipping sauces made from lime juice and black pepper or fish sauce and chilies. The skin is salty and rich, similar to roast chicken, while the meat itself has the savoriness of pork. Most Cambodians pair it with a local lager, such as Angkor. And no you don’t eat the tail.

      • Substance_P@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        40
        ·
        4 days ago

        Apparently field mice with a diet of rice, corn and sugar-cane are vastly different “animals” than their city dwelling brethrens.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          3 days ago

          Well this is kinda easy to understand even as a westerner; you probably consider a gray/flecked pigeon as a something more or less dirty, but a white dove is the sign of purity and whatnot.

          Exactly the same animal, just different colouring.

          Somehow we just think eating French fries off the ground makes pigeons dirty but doves eating insects is completely fine.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            3 days ago

            Pigeons are done so dirty it’s so sad.

            I mean I also would like if they didn’t cover everything in pewp en masse, preferably, but otherwise they’re beautiful animals that aren’t the “flying rats” people have dubbed them as.

            I think anything will be considered more clean, appealing, and less gross when it isn’t being forced to scrounge around a nasty toxic concrete city habitat for scrap sustenance, but what do I know. Lol

          • nomy@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 days ago

            I know lots of small game hunters in the U.S. and it’s very much the same. Try to avoid taking game close to human developments as they’ll feed on trash and it can lead to issues like overpopulation and disease.

            Taking game from wild areas means the animal has had to hunt and forage to survive leading to a healthier population and healthier harvest.

      • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        edit-2
        4 days ago

        Still I wonder whether they’d taste even better if they were given A LOT of food, and made very fatty.

        • Soggy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          4 days ago

          Depends entirely on where the rat came from. I wouldn’t eat a New York city garbage rat but I see nothing wrong with a woods rat. People eat woods animals all the time, including rabbit and squirrel.

          • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            3 days ago

            And racoon. Racoons are delicious, the meat being comparable to dark meat chicken. I wouldn’t eat some city trash panda, but the coons out here in the country are hell yeah.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        4 days ago

        Yeah, I was thinking it sounded like a good menu description. Wouldn’t it would be fun to come home and tell everyone you had barbecued farm-raised country rat?

        • mistermodal@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 hours ago

          I would immediately post rat mukbang on social media in fact. I look forward to visiting Cambodia soon.

  • SparroHawc@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    64
    ·
    4 days ago

    Anyone who’s read Terry Pratchett knows that rats on a stick are a well-beloved street food in Ankh-Morpork!

    • dalekcaan@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      4 days ago

      Among the dwarves, anyway. Most humans seem to prefer a sausage inna bun, though the way Dibbler’s food is described, I think the dwarves might be better off.

      • kalpol@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        4 days ago

        Babbington looked wretchedly from one to the other, licked his lips and said, ‘I ate your rat, sir. I am very sorry, and I ask your pardon.’

        ‘Did you so?’ said Stephen mildly. ‘Well, I hope you enjoyed it. Listen, Jack, will you look at my list, now?’

        'He only ate it when it was dead,’ said Jack.

        ‘It would have been a strangely hasty, agitated meal, had he ate it before,’ said Stephen.

  • Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    41
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    Wow those rats are HUGE. This is AFTER they’ve been barbecued so they’ll have had heads and fur removed and shrunk from moisture loss and they still look that big. Wouldn’t want to find one of those things before they’re barbecued.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    3 days ago

    Once you skin’em, they don’t look much differ’nt than a skwrl, and e’rybody ets skwrl alla time.

      • SippyCup@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        4 days ago

        Cambodian field rats, specifically. The kids go through sugar cane fields to hunt them. They’re a dietary staple there. They aren’t like sewer rats, and probably taste a bit like pork. They’re probably healthier animals than most of the meat you’d get in the US would be. If you’re ever in SE Asia and have the opportunity, highly encourage you to try one.

    • dingus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      4 days ago

      It’s not the odd animal that bothers me. It’s just that I know rats are huge carriers of serious diseases while living that I’m not sure if they’d still be dangerous to eat after cooking.

      • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        4 days ago

        Are they? I think the plague was spread by their fleas rather than the rats themselves, not sure about other diseases though. Eating chicken raw isn’t good for you either, so I am not sure if its much point in comparing them while alive.

        Kidney beans are pretty bad for you in their raw state too.

        • dingus@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 days ago

          Well I have no idea if it is dangerous or not. I’d have to investigate further.

          Even if technically fleas may have spread the disease, they were still located on and being carried by the rats. Hantavirus is a huge dangerous one that rats can spread. There are others too as well as parasitic infections.

          Same bacteria produce toxins and even after cooking it, the bacteria are destroyed, but the toxins remain. But it depends on the type of bacteria. It’s how some types of food poisoning works.

          But yeah if all of these still mean that rats are safe to eat when cooked thoroughly, I’m on board. I just don’t know enough about cooked rats and quite frankly I don’t feel like investigating more since there is no one selling cooked rats by me lol.

          • skisnow@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            3 days ago

            Well I have no idea if it is dangerous or not. I’d have to investigate further.

            “but I’m still going to publicly share my opinions on it first”

            I hate the internet, and yet I can’t seem to stop logging on. FML

            • dingus@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              edit-2
              3 days ago

              I mean, this isn’t a scientific research lab or anything. It’s a casual conversational community lol.

              • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                3 days ago

                Lol yeah don’t worry too much about it.

                Not like this comment was your grand presentation at the International Edible Carrion Science Conference 2025 or something. :p

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    4 days ago

    Always wondered how much meat was on a rat. Thought about squirrel hunting, but I just can’t kill for a single burrito worth of meat. And yes, I get that they’re eating pests in this case.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      4 days ago

      Up through WWI, there was an official war on squirrels, which ran for the previous 400 years. There were often bounties on squirrels in many places.

      The iconic cookbook The Joy of Cooking included directions to skin a squirrel, with recipes, until just a few decades ago.

  • Druid@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    45
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    Mark as NSFW maybe

    Edit: literal fucking burnt corpses of animals, but sure guys - keep making fun of me

    • Tetsuo@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 days ago

      Do you work in Cambodia and don’t want colleagues to know about your favorite snack ?

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 days ago

          That would be nice yes. People who eat meat are desensitized to the image. Others find it disturbing.

          • jet@hackertalks.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            8 hours ago

            Eating meat is a standard human experience, and while some have chosen not to eat meat, the fact others do shouldn’t require censorship.

            A reasonable human being can expect to see prepared food at restaurants, on people walking around while eating, on advertisements, at the grocery store, at street food vendors… And in this photo on the side of the road

            Pictures of prepared food are also work safe, because a reasonable person would encounter such sights at work lunches, catering, in the kitchen, etc.

            Therefore I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask Lemmy to censor pictures of prepared foods.

            • BCsven@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              8 hours ago

              Depends where you are from. If you are Hindu in India meat is not standard. Lots of vegetarians in that regian as well as Jain diet followers.

              Then you have South Korean dog farms, so if we were posting strung up dogs people would be freaking out of NSFW tags.

              Its all relative to desensitization.

              im not saying you have to or should be forced to NSFW tag those images, but it can be highly distruving for a large number of people.

              Like some friends love meat but if I shown them how you disembowel the rabbit or duck before cooking they’d be barfing

              • jet@hackertalks.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                8 hours ago

                Do you ever go with your friends to dinner? Do you expect them not to eat meat in front of you?

                We are here on Lemmy sharing human experiences, it’s not reasonable to ask people to censor those experiences when they’re in the range of normal acceptable experiences for most people.

        • muix@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          3 days ago

          Yes, is it so bad that I don’t like seeing dead animals? I block all the non-vegan food communities for this exact reason. Lemmy probably would’ve freaked out over a picture of a skinned and fried dog, I don’t see a difference.

          • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            3 days ago

            Shops and general society don’t care about roast chickens on public display, it isn’t NSFW. So an NSFW tag would be inappropriate.