Did you mean: Cook Whole Meat?

I came across something at the world's largest fish market in Tokyo. Hmmm, that ahi tuna looks awfully red. My, one might say that these are juicy cuts of beef. I caught on pretty quickly, that it wasn't tuna. Lets see if you can guess what meat it is.

If you're still having trouble, look in the background.

The texture and color of whale meat becomes rather unmistakable after seeing it once. Well, maybe dolphin, or the rendered flesh of a clubbed baby seal might look the same, but it's no salmon. I had never seen it before in any grocery store, so I assumed it was only restaurant fare. I was surprised when I stumbled across it.

I was walking through my local discount grocery store. They have an average selection of fish, but they specialize in the discount selections. This is where I get the cheapest meat I have yet to find in Japan: my boneless chicken breasts for 35yen/100g (about $1.50/lbs). Many stores don't even really carry chicken breast. It's not the popular cut here.

I was curious to see the price on salmon, so I scanned the shelves. My eyes settled on a tiny package, up top, partially obscured by the shelf. The dark red mamaliness unmistakably identified it. I couldn't read the kanji, but I knew what I had found.

So, you might say that you thought there was a global moratorium on whale meat. Why, you'd be right. Even Japan is a part of it. Well, then how is this possible? It's simple really and all in the name of science. Japan, and Norway believe that they must carry on scientific research on whales. They give permits to 'cull' a number of smaller whales (mainly minke whales) every year. I believe that they look into the dead whales stomach, verify that is indeed not consuming mountain goats or large quantities of condors, and call the research complete. Now it would be wasteful to just throw the meat out, so they sell it for human consumption. I always thought it ended up in high-end grocery stores because I've never seen it outside of the fishing market, but here it was, in all its shimmering plasticy wrapped glory.

I think this is cruel, inhuman, and overpriced at 487 yen /100g, or about $20 / lbs. This disgusting flout of international law and abject disregard of the oceanic mammalian species sickens me to the core. Needless to say, the whale meat was moved with my sympathy, and 100 grams of it followed me home. You wouldn't want it to end up in the wrong hands, would you?

This would be my first time to cook scientifically culled Minke whale, or any what for that matter. I needed to do a bit of preliminary culinary research. I typed in "cook whale meat" into Yahoo. It immediately came back with, "Did you mean: cook whole meat ?" The recipes ranged from boiling the meat first in water with baking soda for five minutes before cooking, to eating it raw with a little soy sauce, an Icelandic recipe, I assume the baking soda boiling was to remove the old beached whale flavor since that recipe was from about 1914, a period not known for great advances in refrigeration. Most of the recipes basically treated it like beef: bbq, marinade, pan-fry, or sautee. Minke whale: it's what's for dinner.

Actually, it made a great lunch. I decided to have my 100 grams as god intended it: lightly seared on the outside in grated ginger and ground black pepper in butter and veggie oil. It was only cooked about 2 mm into the meat though. The center was very very raw. After slicing it, a little bit of salt was sprinkled on top. The taste? It is actually now one of my favorite meats, albeit the price. It has a light beefyness to it, but is the softest red meat I have ever had. It's texture is very much like a red meat, but soft and uncompact. I can't find a good comparison for the consistency, but it is somewhere between the toughness of the most tender cuts of beef and the jiggliest cottage cheese thighs. It has less jiggle than raw liver but more overall give. My piece was very lean, but has a very high moisture content, giving the tenderness. There can be pieces of gristle and veins in the meat, but this was a good cut with very very little gristle. It is a light beef flavor with a oceanic hint to it. It finishes off like a dark red piece of raw ahi tuna. I recommend trying raw beef (but never in the US) and getting a taste for straight sashimi before trying raw whale, to get the full appreciation of the flavor. Of course, you can have it medium rare if you'd like, but it won't taste as whaley.

Fresh From the Package:

All prettied up for a photo. Hmmm, maybe I'll cook it a little bit more.

Gingery and brown on the outside, yet still cold on the inside. Bon appetit!