Horse Meat
Also known as horsemeat, equine, Pferdefleisch, viande chevaline, carne equina, carne de caballo, kazy meat
Very dark, very lean and noticeably sweet, with a fat that is soft and unusual. A significant tradition across Central Asia, Italy and parts of northern Europe, and a legal and cultural minefield elsewhere.
Horse is an athletic animal and its meat shows it. It is darker than beef, sometimes almost purple when fresh, because it carries a high concentration of myoglobin; it is very lean; and it is distinctly sweet, carrying more glycogen than other red meats, which also means it can taste faintly sweet in a way that surprises people expecting beef.
The fat is the technical peculiarity. Horse fat is soft, yellowish from carotene, and much more unsaturated than beef or pork fat, with a low melting point. It renders easily and it oxidises quickly, and it will not behave like back fat in a mix. In the Central Asian traditions that use horse most seriously the fat is not fought but featured: kazy is made from the rib meat with its own fat left in long strips, and the fat is the point of the product.
The traditions are real and geographically specific. Central Asia, above all Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, has the deepest horse charcuterie, with kazy, chuchuk and the smoked and dried rib products. Italy has a genuine and continuous tradition, particularly in Veneto, Puglia and Friuli, with horse salami, bresaola di cavallo and sfilacci. France, Belgium and the Netherlands eat and cure it, and smoked horse is a normal delicatessen item in parts of the Low Countries. Japan eats it raw as basashi. Poland, Sweden and Switzerland all have products.
Elsewhere it is contentious, and the Codex records the tradition without recommending it into a culture that does not have it. In the United States, and in the United Kingdom in practice, horse is not part of the food tradition and the supply chain is not built for it. Anyone working with horse needs to be certain of the legal position where they are and of the traceability of the animal, and the second point is not merely bureaucratic: horses are frequently treated with veterinary drugs, notably phenylbutazone, that are not permitted in food-producing animals, and the 2013 European horsemeat scandal was as much about traceability failure as about mislabelling.
For curing, the leanness and dark colour make horse a natural for the dried products, and the sweetness is an asset in a fermented sausage. Where horse fat is used it should be treated as a fast-oxidising material and the product eaten young.
Temple element. Pillar, Meat Quality