Content

• Ingredients
• To step
• Tips
• Warnings

Whether you bought fresh snake meat from a market in a region where this is a popular dish, or you've skinned a snake yourself especially for dinner, you won't find a snake meat recipe in the average cookbook. Snake is somewhere in between chicken and fish in texture and flavor, and can be prepared to resemble either. This article gives a recipe that is also suitable for bluegill, so the result will be reminiscent of a small freshwater fish.

Ingredients

• 1 snake, obtained from a trusted source or environment, to avoid eating a snake that has eaten a poisoned rodent.
• 1 box of cornbread mixture
• 120 ml of protein
• Pinch of black pepper
• 1 cm of oil (depending on the size of the pan)

To step

1. Cool the meat as soon as possible. It can also be frozen. The structure of the flesh remains intact, and the color of the skin is unaffected.
2. Skin the snake.Cut the head off, remove the skin and gut the dead snake.
3. Rinse the meat and cut it into pieces with a sharp knife or chicken shears. Make the cuts between and at the same angle as the ribs to avoid cutting the ribs. If the ribs are cut, they can be difficult to remove from the meat after cooking. Some people prefer to soak the ready-to-eat pieces of hose in salt water for a day or two to remove any residual blood or "game flavor" from the meat.
4. Dip the wedges in a little egg white (milk is fine too) before adding them to a paprika and sweet corn mix (or corn mix with some extra black pepper). Shake off the excess.
5. Heat about 2 cm of canola, vegetable or peanut oil in a heavy skillet until quite hot. Add the pieces of hose one by one to prevent the temperature in the pan from dropping too quickly. Use pliers to keep your fingers away from the scalding hot oil, watch out for dangerous splashes, and use a screen if necessary to avoid a mess. When the batter starts to turn golden brown, turn the pieces of hose over - by the time it turns dark brown, the hose will have been overcooked. There is not much meat on the bones, and the muscles are thin and lean.
6. Drain and cool the meat. Remove the pieces of tubing before they are completely ready - they will continue to cook after removal from the pan - and place them on paper towels to drain and cool.
7. Serve your baked snakes hot, with napkins - you eat this dish with your fingers. Eat most of the things you would serve with fried fish.
8. Eat the snake meat. There should be a line of muscles on either side of the spine; this is the thickest piece of meat on the snake's body. The ribs are quite tightly attached to the spine, so nibble your teeth firmly over them to remove the rest of the meat from the ribs.

Tips

• Overcooking (like in these pictures) will result in snake meat that tastes fried, but if done just right, it will take on a nutty flavor.
• If you have even more batter, chop some vegetables, dip them in the egg whites and / or milk, roll them through the batter and fry.
• You can also just mix the liquid with the batter and then bake "hush puppies".
• Snake meat gets most of its flavor from the way it is seasoned and prepared. Cooking methods used for chicken will produce snake meat that tastes like chicken.

Warnings

• It is illegal for several snakes to kill them (especially poisonous ones). Some are protected by federal law, and you can face jail time and / or fines for killing a protected snake.
• Do not eat the snake's head, because this is where the poison is located (if the snake happens to be a poisonous species). A snake's body contains no poison and is safe for consumption.
• Wash your hands as you would when handling all types of raw meat.
• Remember to boil the hose to at least 65 degrees Celsius to kill any bacteria.
• When hunting snakes in the wild for this or any other recipe, take extreme caution and care.