Fried Cow Brain Sandwich

One of my goals in life is to eat one of these. I read that they are popular in some areas of Indiana. Anyone tried one or know of a closer restaurant, say in Texas?

Google "prions" and see how your appetite holds up.

Well, here in SW Indiana, there are several restaurants that serve brain sandwiches. We also have a weeklong street festival in the fall that has at least two food booths that serves them. All now serve pork brains instead of cow brains (Mad Cow Disease kind of put a damper on using the latter). The brains are battered and deep fried.

We were even featured in one episode of Alton Brown's "Feasting on Asphalt" in which Alton actually tried one (He didn't like it!). Our brain sandwiches were also featured in a segment on NPR's Morning Edition (the correspondent did a story earlier about eating dog in Korea, then he came here for a lecture at the local college.)

I have to admit, I haven't ever tried one - On principle, I refuse to eat anything that some animal thunk with!

Darian Rachal said:

One of my goals in life is to eat one of these. .. Anyone tried one or know of a closer restaurant, say in Texas?

Click to expand...

Yeah.. the same place where you can get calf fries and tripe!

:rotflol:

Well, you can come out here to Idaho and have some Rocky Mountain Oysters during "Eagle Days" in Eagle, Idaho



You figure out what an "oyster" is

gpoehlein said:

[snip]
I have to admit, I haven't ever tried one - On principle, I refuse to eat anything that some animal thunk with!

Click to expand...

You would be up for a politician brain sandwich then?

:rotflol:

shreadvector said:

Google "prions" and see how your appetite holds up.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't have had the appetite for the sandwich to begin with but after holding the hand of a loved one as she died from Creudtzfelt-Jakob Disease two years ago, I'd urge everyone else to take a pass as well. One day I had a perfectly normal phone conversation with my aunt, two weeks later she was in late stage dementia and the doctors were scrambling to find out what was wrong, and 2 months beyond that we were gathering for the funeral.

My Tae Kwon Do instructor (a Florida native) used to say there are no bad fried foods.

I think someone has now proved him wrong.

I don't remember where this conversation came from but this thread reminded me of it.

"Do you want a tongue sandwich?"

"Eww, No! I'm not going to eat something that came out of an animals mouth!" "I'll just have some eggs."

:surprised:

skippy-2 said:

You would be up for a politician brain sandwich then?

Click to expand...

Nope, there's too much of a risk of cross-contamination from Cranial-Rectal Inversion Syndrome. Besides wouldn't the atrophy leave you with not much to eat?

Just in case you think you can avoid CJD by avoiding fried brains...

A new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) may have been uncovered in a handful of patients in the US.

Ten people have so far died from a fast-advancing form of fatal dementia called PSPr, New Scientist reports.

Patients develop the trademark brain damage associated with CJD - the type not linked to BSE - but scientists believe there may be a genetic cause.
...
Dr Pierluigi Gambetti, director of the US National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center, in Ohio, said that he believed the newly discovered type had probably "been around for years, unnoticed".

He suggested one interesting common factor was that the patients came from families with a history of dementia, suggesting a genetic cause, but did not carry the gene traditionally associated with a small number of sporadic CJD cases.

Click to expand...

Full report here:
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7497867.stm

There have always been a few cases of CJD every year or so. These were attributed to genetic causes. What got everyone's attention a few years back was the sudden massive increase in the number of CJD cases in Britain. The increase was so statistically anomylous that investigators figured there had to be another cause besides genetic malfunction. It turns out that Mad Cow Disease is an example of a disease that's been around for ages (Scrapie in sheep) jumping the species barrier via a third species (Humans apparently can't catch CJD from eating scrapie infected sheep, but if you feed the contaminated residue from those same sheep to cows, then let people it the beef from those cows - BOOM!). There's also some evidence that eating the meat from Mad Cows is safe, as long as there is NO contamination from Central Nervous System tissue (brains or spinal cord).

OTOH, as I said in my earlier post, pork brains are perfectly save - the infectious agent has not jumped the species barrier into pigs.

Mikus_Superfly said:

Nope, there's too much of a risk of cross-contamination from Cranial-Rectal Inversion Syndrome. Besides wouldn't the atrophy leave you with not much to eat?

Click to expand...

True. You do have to sprinkle them on...

I'll admit, I did try brains once. They were from from a taqueria, a little taco shop. They were O.K. I remember asking myself.. " Why do I keep chewing on this same piece all day" I kept saying moo alot. That's all I remember.

dave carver said:

Well, you can come out here to Idaho and have some Rocky Mountain Oysters during "Eagle Days" in Eagle, Idaho



You figure out what an "oyster" is

Click to expand...

Dave, That's another item on my lists of things I'd like to eat, along with snake, turtle, and BBQ goat.

When I was young, I was particularly fond of squirrel brains.

How many of you are familiar with a Southern delicacy called cracklins?

It's a cajun health food.

I ate one back in the 60's, it was very rich and I couldn't eat a lot. My Dad told me that during the Great Depression brains were a pay day treat. When they got payed they would stop by a packing plant on the way home and pick up a bucket full. They also scrambled them with eggs.
My Dad was into exotic foods for awhile, so we ate chocolate covered ants, fried grasshoppers, etc.:surprised:
I have tried rattle snake chili, dog, monkey, dried squid (it's like jerky), mountain oysters, calf fries, and some other things that escape me behind due to an alcohol induced fog at the time. Most of this was during my trips to the Western Pacific (WESTPAC) with the US Navy.irate:
I was taught to try something at least once so I have tried many things but there were a lot of them that I never ate again.

Um, you guys do know that there are better parts of a moo cow to eat, right? :cow:

Cliff