Spit or swallow?
Creamy, briny, and filled with sperm, shirako is the sort of seafood delicacy that some folks prefer to savor before they learn of its provenance. But dishes featuring these sperm sacs of fish, also known as milt, sell for a pretty penny when they’re in season in Japan.
Milt can actually come from any sea creature that sprays its seminal seed, including most fish, mollusks, and cephalopods. Although the viscous fluid can be mixed with other ingredients, most cooks elect to leave the sac intact, preserving shirako’s light, fine texture, which some liken to brains. To avoid a tough outer sack and granular inner texture, the milt should be cooked just until the outside begins to tighten while the inside remains like a thick, melty cream cheese.
The genitalia can be steamed to best capture their sweetness, dipped in tempura batter and fried to produce a crunchy-coated custard, or served raw atop gunkan maki sushi.
ht/ the increasingly demented phenry
Spit or swallow?
Neither – that will never enter my mouth at any time ever!
Ask Stormy
The human male shiraco has been forced fed to many people, since time began.
‘Gag a maggot on a gut wagon’, springs to mind.
Hell, congress and the malicious left have been force feeding political ‘shiraco’ to us for years.
Political shiraco: Just close your eyes and pretend you like it.
Very popular in SF.
In restaurants that serve this, the sous-chef is also known as the fluffer.
I’m still wondering who was the first person to pull on a cows udder, collect the fluid and drink it. If you take the time to ponder it eggs are cringe inducing too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkIZR-CE3iY
I’ve eaten Rocky Mountain oysters (laughing hysterically the whole time) but I would never, ever even think about trying this. ICK!!!
Just think, someone cut open a fish at some point, saw that and decided to eat it.
Guilty. But with an excuse, your honor.
Planning a road trip from VA to KS and that site has a listing of peculiar things to see on the way. Ventriloquist Dummy Museum, largest fork in the world, a restaurant that features waiters who throw bread rolls across the room to clients.
Well, this showed up on the home page and I considered it my duty to forward to Fur
Okay, but… caviar?
Protein is protein…
(Okay, maybe I’m just feeling ornery this a.m… or maybe not. Can’t decide.)
“Got milt?”
😉
Hey, the description sounds like it’d be pretty tasty! I wonder if there’s a restaurant in SW Florida that serves shirako?
A lot of food acceptance/avoidance is purely cultural. I mean, in some places pickled pigs feet are popular, no matter that everybody knows where those trotters have been.
One of my friends dad was of German heritage from Minnesota and he loved pickled pigs feet, pickled hardboiled eggs, pickled herring etc. I never ate the pickled pigs feet and the pickled eggs, he couldn’t convince me no matter how hard he tried to eat either. I did try pickled herring once and didn’t like it, I will eat kippered herring and sardines. Trader Joes used to have herring in harissa sauce and it was real good but I haven’t seen it for a while. I’ll even eat octopus and calamari and good sushi at Asian restaurants. I went to a new Vietnamese restaurant yesterday with 3 of my oldest friends, we’re all over 65 and a had a very good lunch together and I’ll probably go back again and try some of the other food, it was good and fairly inexpensive.
Uncle Al. Pickled pigs feet. Yummy, yum, yum. A favorite at our American Legion Post.
OK look. As a person who lived in Japan for 5 years, I can tell you that the Japanese are the, ‘Here, hold my beer’ champions of weird cuisine.
Oh you guys crack me up. I see a lot of you never gave much thought to what a chicken egg is. And are perfectly happy to eat them for breakfast or whip them into other foods. I guess it keeps you from acknowledging they’re in the same class of food as shirako. And you’re swallowers.