I’m looking for mongoose cooking recipies, & cooking history, please let me know if you can find anything.
—Cobra’s Revenge
Dear Cobra Commander:
After a brief bit of research, I can understand why you’d want revenge on a mongoose. Most of the references I’ve been able to find to the species is in terms of their skill at fighting cobras (e.g. Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki Tikki Tavi).
In terms of eating Mongeese, though, it was tough to find reliable sources. As Mongeese live throughout Africa and Asia, I checked all cookbooks I could find that describe cuisine from those continents, and found zero reference to Mongoosophagy. The internets provided little additional information. The first reference I came across to butchering/ eating mongoose was guidelines for some sort of a role-playing game; hence, I’m hesitant to describe it as a credible resource.
After a bit more digging, though, I came across a reference from the scholarly journal Mammalia. In #73, published March 2009, there is an article titled “Mongoose species in southern Benin: Preliminary ecological survey and local community perceptions.” Among the more interesting purposes the article describes mongooses being used for is “the marsh mongoose… whose head [8% of interviewees recognized as being] used to consult the oracle.”
As far as food purposes go, 60% of interviewees recognized the mongoose as being edible, with some species “considered food delicacies because of their rarity,” though it is worth noting that “11% of interviewees did not appreciate the mongoose meat because of its unpleasant musky odor coming from their scent glands.”
Therefore, should you trap a mongoose and butcher it for meat purposes, I would recommend that you identify and remove said scent glands as quickly as possible upon dispensing with the animal so as to reduce their influence on the character of the meat. From there, unfortunately, you are on your own as the article provided no culinary guidance in terms of whether the Beninese tend to roast or stew their mongoose.
I figure the safest bet would be to stew all but the tenderloins: it is safe to assume that the tenderloins will respond well to roasting as they are little-used muscles. Otherwise, though, a meat that can be roasted will come out fine when braised, but a meat that should only be braised would be destroyed by the roasting process.
Hope this helps. if you actually eat a mongoose, please write up the experience for me and i’d be glad to post it as a guest post on this site.
