I’d Walk a Mile For a Camel Burger

I’m back on my diet again now, thanks to my bad habit of confusing chocolate cake & ice cream as two of the four basic food groups. I did a really good job of sticking to my diet for a long time, but the past year? Let’s just say that I “fell off the wagon” more times than Lindsay Lohan over a holiday weekend in Vegas...

Anyway, I’m trying the whole low carb thing again, since it worked pretty well before. But that means your primary source of all things edible is MEAT. Burgers and chicken and pork chops, oh my! It gets old after a while, but I suppose it’s better than trying to convince yourself that Snickers and Doritos makes for a balanced meal.

So with that in mind, let me share this article I saw online yesterday about a different type of meat product that may soon be coming to your grocer’s freezer:

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Steak Desert Style: Camel Kebabs

DAMASCUS, Syria: There's no question about the type of meat served at the Camel Gathering Place restaurant.

Camels — stuffed and in pictures — are everywhere. Half a dozen men wait to order camel at the popular little neighborhood restaurant; the line stretches out the door. Behind the counter a man works feverishly, squeezing ground meat onto skewers. Waiters glide by carrying plates of grilled camel, bread and roasted vegetables.

The Camel Gathering Place is so popular that the manager says it sells meat from one camel a week. That's a lot of meat, considering the desert animals weigh up to 1,000 pounds.

Camel is beloved in many Persian Gulf countries for the same reason Americans love hamburgers — it's cheap and tasty.

The kebabs served at the Camel Gathering Place have all the consistency and juiciness of a medium-rare steak. The meat's mild flavor resembles that of filet mignon, and camel is lower in fat than other types of meat; many locals opt for camel over the favored lamb.

The camel's most distinctive feature doesn't get cast into a sand dune, either. Some say the hump — which is made up of fatty tissue, not water — is the most flavorful part. It's so delicious that some people prefer to eat it raw.

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So there you have it – we’ve graduated from Ground Round to buffalo to ostrich to camel. Mmmm, mmmm, that’s fine cookin'.

Now, I can’t say that I’m thrilled at the prospects to sitting down to a lovely meal of Camel Hump Pot Roast or Camel Nose Flambe’. (And we’ll leave the “camel toe” jokes out of this, thankyouverymuch.) For some odd reason – and it may just be me – a Camel and Swiss on Rye doesn’t exactly whet my appetite.

Besides, when you think “Camel”, doesn’t this guy come to mind?

So a camel steak with a side of tar & nicotine just doesn’t strike me as being “Good Eats”.

But who knows – it was probably not that long ago that people scoffed at the thought of eating “gator bites” or artificially colored/flavored/dyed “krab”. So it’s quite possible that camel will be the next big thing in the culinary world. If you happen to see Emeril dousing a big filet-o’-camel with garlic, you know that a trend is on it’s way.

…And here’s to hoping that the next big meat-du-jour isn’t penguin.