So does rattlesnake taste like chicken?

whm1974 said:

So I'm watching "Little House on the Prairie" Season 1 Episode 9 "Ma's Holiday" Where Mr Edwards shoots a rattler and while he is watching the three girls, he serve it up for dinner... And calls it "Injun stew"...

The two oldest don't like it... Dog wouldn't eat either... But I do wonder that wouldn't snake be on the menu a lot of times, since meat is meat?

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It does taste like chicken, I like to make cutlets, cover it in lemon pepper flour, and fry it in butter. Sad story, few snakes around here get plump enough to eat.

horsey300 said:

It does taste like chicken, I like to make cutlets, cover it in lemon pepper flour, and fry it in butter. Sad story, few snakes around here get plump enough to eat.

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I do essentially the same thing, with the same results. I also really like snake chunks in chili.

Fat, healthy rattlers are easy to come by in my neck of the woods, and actually are taken on a fishing license, of all things!

It taste like alligator, which tastes like chicken? At least in my experience.

This is funny. I've had it in chilli a few times. Meat is meat. The rattlesnakes around here don't get big enough to do much more with them.

whm1974 said:

I don't know often it would been on the menu, but didn't farmers regularly killed any venomous snakes found on their farm?

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I did. I haven't actually farmed in a long time, but I still kill any venomous snakes I find on our acreage. We have pets, and we'll probably have great-grandchildren to be concerned about before too long.
However, to get back to your original question - on our first date, my then girlfriend (now my wife of 49 years) talked me into ordering frog legs for dinner in a fancy restaurant. "They're sort of like chicken," she said.
She was right - those frog legs were "sort of like" tough, stringy, fish-flavored rooster chicken that had been in the freezer far too long! And I hate fish anyway!
I forgave my future bride (obviously), even though that was probably the most expensive meal I've ever tried to eat, and couldn't. But I still get suspicious whenever someone tells me, "It's like chicken."
Our son-in-law said it best awhile back. He said, "Chicken tastes like chicken, what's so great about that?"

whm1974 said:

Depends on how it is seasoned?

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Yeah, that has to be it.

I love a mess of big bullfrog legs. The backs are good too. Fry them up with butter, no breading, and they don't taste like chicken, they taste like scallops.

I cooked a rattlesnake on a stick over a campfire when I did the mountain man thing one summer.
It reminded me of why I don’t like chicken.
I threw the snake in the fire and ate the stick

Does everything taste like chicken or does chicken taste like everything?
The only meat my mom will eat is chicken, from the age of 7 until I left home at 20 I ate chicken for dinner... Every. Single. Night.
I couldn't look at bird for years after that but I've warmed back up to it as long as it's deep fried.

Ive eaten a few rattlesnakes. Yeah, sort of chicken-like (is that a good thing?). As mentioned, its not easy finding a big enough snake to get much meat. Most Ive killed up north have been pretty small, 24" or so. Even a fairly large snake is rather like filleting a fish, throwing the filet away and eating the bony part thats usually thrown out. Lots of thin fine rib bones.

Be advised in handling any presumably dead rattlesnakes, they can operate on nerves for a hour or more after "dead" and bite you if you touch them. Cut the head off and it can still bite you if you touch it. I immediately stand on the head, and cut it off, burying it on the spot, even if it means cutting into gravelly ground and digging a hole in said ground with a Randall made knife.

I like frog legs with lots of lemon juice on them. They taste like chicken. Chicken tastes like rattlesnake, except chicken is better and has less bones.

I don’t care if you have cut the head off the rattler and buried it, you can’t help but jump when the bloody stump strikes you.

Obturation said:

Does everything taste like chicken or does chicken taste like everything?
The only meat my mom will eat is chicken, from the age of 7 until I left home at 20 I ate chicken for dinner... Every. Single. Night.
I couldn't look at bird for years after that but I've warmed back up to it as long as it's deep fried.

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Your mom was doing you a favor. Red meat is bad for the colon. Well the colonoscopy guys says that any way.

Sorta depends on the chicken, don't it?

LD

I had some rattlesnake meat that was boiled and that was it. Some local good old boys I use to know caught it, killed it and prepped it for eating. They said boiled is the only way they ever made it and ate it. The meat was very white and it didn't have much taste. Not like chicken at all. Then again I've never eaten boiled chicken. On another note I had some snapping turtle stew in New Orleans that was delicious.

Tastes more like spotted owl.

A good friend of mine, a veterinarian, said that chicken would have no flavor at all except for the salmonella bacteria. He would not eat chicken if he was starving.

natman said:

Tastes more like spotted owl.

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LD

The only time I had campfire rattlesnake was largely out of curiosity. All I really recall was that it was really greasy.

I’ve ate a enough rattle snake to to figure something out.

if you fry the snake in oil last used to fry chicken, the snake will taste like chicken.

if you fry the snake in oil last used to fry catfish in, the snake will taste like catfish.

if you fry the snake in oil last used to fry shrimp, then the snake will taste like shrimp.

if you fry snake in fresh oil it doesn’t taste like anything I’ve ever had, a bit bland but the lemon and pepper (Or whatever you put on it) really stands out a lot.


I’ve also had it grilled, again a little bland but when you cover it in butter it’s good, but that’s true about most anything.


I personally can take it or leave it, but my brother thinks it’s the best meat on the face of the earth. When we still lived together people would bring him rattlers all the time.

BTW: we were always told not to eat one that had been run over because they sometimes strike at the tire which will be gone so they end up biting themselves, I have no idea if it’s true or not. We never took any that had been run over, better safe than sorry. We were also told that a yellow area was a sign that he had been bitten, and again I don’t know if it’s true but we have seen yellow meat in some of them, they got buried not eaten.

So does rattlesnake taste like chicken?

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NO, chicken taste like rattlesnake!

DM