I had a Chinese roommate once who liked those – he said they’re a delicacy in China and he couldn’t believe how cheap they are in the U.S. Well, I guess they will be expensive anywhere they’re popular – consider how many chickens you have to kill to get a pound of feet.
I’ve tried some at a local Chinese buffet; I don’t see the appeal. They’re just fatty skin on the bones.
The shark fins you get in shark fin soup are broken strands from dishes made with whole fins, or small or broken fins that otherwise couldn’t be sold whole. It’s basically bits and pieces of fin to put a premium on regular soup. What you want is whole fin that’s been braised in the chef’s special broth/sauce. The bigger and more intact the fin is, the higher premium you will pay. It’s true that the fin itself is pretty bland but it takes on the flavour of the broth while it’s being braised. And as others have mentioned, you eat it for the texture experience, not because it’s comfort food.
As one of the top four delicacies in China, and with shark fins going for about $1,000/kilo on average, if you’re paying anything less than $50 for a bowl of soup, (not whole fin), you’re probably getting some imitation stuff made of gelatin.
What are the other three? Enquiring minds like mine want to know!
In no particular order:
[ul]
[li]Swallow’s (bird) nest[/li][li]Abalone[/li][li]Sea cucumber[/li][/ul]
thanks!
I lived for a little under three years in East Africa, quite close to the ocean. They had a big sea cucumber fishery going, partially because some of the more popular fishes had been fished out and become rarer. None of the local fishermen ever ate the sea cucumbers, or could fathom why anyone would eat one, they considered them revolting. But they made (comparatively) good income drying them and selling them to dealers who would export them to China.
Australia actually was ‘discovered’ by Indonesian fishermen before it was known to Europeans, they used it as a fishery for sea cucumbers that they would export to China.
Abalone poaching is a huge dealin South Africa. Man, between that and our rhinos, fuck the Chinese.
I somehow had the hope that viagra would swiftly put an end to the ludicrous traditional chinese aphrodisiac market for endangered animal parts. Hey, we got something that really works, so forget about the tiger penis soup. Except naw, they’ll take the viagra AND the tiger penis. Assholes.
We now have a small export industry in Alaska for reindeer/caribou antlers. They saw off the antlers without killing the caribou, so it’s renewable, plus caribou aren’t endangered. This sort of placebo would be fine. But of course it doesn’t help, because apparently the whole point of the aphrodisiac is how expensive and rare and illegal and how many exotic animals had to die for it. If genuine powdered sustainably harvested rhino horn was $2 a pound from Trader Joe’s they wouldn’t want it.
Don’t they drop their antlers at the end of the season anyway? Why saw them off?
They do. I don’t know what antlers are used for, but I have heard that the velvet is used in Chinese medicine, and that drops off before the antler is shed.
Both male and female reindeer generally have antlers unlike many other deer species.
Nobody said this, but rhinoceros horn is used in Chinese medicine, but not for impotence or anything involving your junk.
Well, yes:
Far more pervasive, however, is their use in the traditional medicine systems of many Asian countries, from Malaysia and South Korea to India and China, to cure a variety of ailments. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the horn, which is shaved or ground into a powder and dissolved in boiling water, is used to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, and other disorders. According to the 16th century Chinese pharmacist Li Shi Chen, the horn could also cure snakebites, hallucinations, typhoid, headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning, and “devil possession.” (However, it is not, as commonly believed, prescribed as an aphrodisiac).
However, it still is worthless (as used*) for any of these things.
Around 5 USD, which is pat of the reason I posted this OP I suspected due to price it could be substandard.
But it was actually fake?
Show me a place that can sell real shark fin soup for $5 and I’ll show you a place that makes McDonald’s look like their food is based on organic recipes. You can’t even get decent chicken soup for $5.
Well I guess my OP should be amended to a negative review of fake gelatin shark fin soup then. :o
You know what, sharks are one thing I’m pretty much okay with going extinct. But if they’re cutting off the fin from a live shark, then throwing the shark back, then how is the shark going to go extinct? Fucker just needs to learn how to swim without the fin.
[sub][sup]I may or may not be serious about certain things in this post.[/sup][/sub]
Is the first sentence one of the things you are, or aren’t, serious about?
Because personally, I’d rather have sharks over, say, pandas, any day.
Never tried panda, but I’ve heard it’s gamey.
Economics. Shark fin sells for a higher price than shark meat. So fishing boats would rather kill a thousand sharks and fill up their hold with fins than kill twenty sharks and fill up their hold with meat.
So you’re saying this can of Campbell’s Chunky Shark Fin Chowder I got at the dollar store is fake? I thought something was wrong when they spelled Campbell’s with a K but the cashier assured me it was just a typo.
I wish they’d eat mosquitoes, can’t they come up with some super-boner-potion made from mosquitoes and rats’ noses?
I had shark’s (or sharks’) fin/s soup in China once. I remained bonerless and it tasted pretty vapid. The tiny bits of gristle in the broth had less taste than the ‘meat’-on-a-stick that was 1/100th of the price in the street outside.