Raccoon being sold for $9.99 a pound

Hi- A grocery store in the Los Angeles area was reported to the health department for selling raccoon. Apparently it is a delicacy in China. The store has agreed to stop selling frozen raccoon while the health department tries to figure out if it is ok to sell raccoon. They had been selling it for years. They were selling it for $9.99 a pound. Here is the link to the story.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/02/ ... s-as-food/

Is raccoon worth spending that much money on it? I don't believe that I have ever had it. Hope this helps, Nancy.

Most trends start on one of the coasts. Here's hoping that, someday, we can buy raccoon in the Midwest for as little as that. Thanks, Nancy; this helped.

There was an article in the Chicago Tribune a couple years ago about an Illinois hunter or farmer that sold raccoon.

What a bunch of Johnny Come Latelys viewtopic.php?p=22470#p22470

In Dousman Wisconsin (just west of Milwaukee) they have had a Raccoon dinner for greater than 80 years in late January at the American Legion building.

David Hammond wrote:Most trends start on one of the coasts. Here's hoping that, someday, we can buy raccoon in the Midwest for as little as that. Thanks, Nancy; this helped.

Those trends appear to start there, because of their media domination.

Geez, I have bought raccoon in Chicago for 99 cents a pound. The coon was an import from Michigan. It did have the head and paws still intact, because they want to assure it is coon and not cat.

The annual coon dinner is in Delafield, Wisconsin on the last Saturday in January.

I know from a friend whose Mother was born in China, they have cooked and eaten coon. Maybe it is an ancient Chinese secret (thinking of a television commercial from the 1970's)!

Regards.

Raccoon Roadkill. It's what's for dinner.

Photo by SteveZ

$9.99/lb seems excessive, given that raccoons can be harvested from any suburban garage. But on the other hand, how much actual eating meat is there on one of those things?

Roger Ramjet wrote:$9.99/lb seems excessive, given that raccoons can be harvested from any suburban garage. But on the other hand, how much actual eating meat is there on one of those things?

Lots of meat...and one must admit there are some challenges involved in harvesting alley creatures and getting them properly butchered.

Always good to see a resurgence of interest in raccoon on the board. For a while about a decade ago people here seemed obsessed with it.

A fair amount of coverage of the Annual Coon Feed in Delafield can be found in the Annual Raccoon Dinner thread.

For local sources, see Raccoon Shopping in Chicago. To update the thread, I'm afraid Scottie's Fish Market & Bait Shop might be closed but frozen raccoon is still available at Mario's Butcher Shop (5817 W Madison). The price is now $1.19 per pound, still eminently reasonable. You can see a photo of Mario himself proudly holding a raccoon here.

David Hammond wrote:Lots of meat...and one must admit there are some challenges involved in harvesting alley creatures and getting them properly butchered.

Are you admitting? See Needed: Butcher of Raccoon.

Rene G wrote:Always good to see a resurgence of interest in raccoon on the board. For a while about a decade ago people here seemed obsessed with it.

A fair amount of coverage of the Annual Coon Feed in Delafield can be found in the Annual Raccoon Dinner thread.

For local sources, see Raccoon Shopping in Chicago. To update the thread, I'm afraid Scottie's Fish Market & Bait Shop might be closed but frozen raccoon is still available at Mario's Butcher Shop (5817 W Madison). The price is now $1.19 per pound, still eminently reasonable. You can see a photo of Mario himself proudly holding a raccoon here.

David Hammond wrote:Lots of meat...and one must admit there are some challenges involved in harvesting alley creatures and getting them properly butchered.

Are you admitting? See Needed: Butcher of Raccoon.

Yes...and good to know they carry it for such a bargain price at Mario's (practically in the neighborhood).

$9.99/lb seems absurdly high. Are these free range raccoons? Grass fed? At least contented?

Hi- $9.99 does seem really steep. Apparently the store had been selling frozen raccoon for 10 years, and so they must have had some customers buying it. The store is somewhere near Los Angeles. Apparently the county health department was not aware of this until somebody sent them a picture. Since they had never run across this before, they decided they needed to see if this was legal or not, and that was when the store owners decided to discontinue selling it until they heard back from the health department.