Pan Seared Alligator over Red Beans and Rice, Round 1

So I had some alligator meat from ExoticMeats.com . . . . . . .

I've only ever had alligator one other time, and it was served chicken-nugget style. It was good. I would say something like an 80-20 chicken-fish.

I wanted to try to do something a little more interesting. For the second time ever, The Google failed to turn up anything very intriguing. One recipe involved marinating the meat in milk. Sounded weird.

So there's this guy named Brian that we run into fairly regularly at the Vin de Pays wine tastings. He's an instructor at the Pasadena Culinary Institute. I asked him how to go about making an interesting alligator dish. I few phone calls later I had an answer:

The Alligator

• ~1lb. alligator meat.
• ~1tsp. red pepper.
• ~3 cloves garlic, minced.
• 3 12oz. beers (IPA).
• salt & pepper to taste.

Boil the alligator in the IPA for ~20 minutes. Slice into thin strips. Sautee the garlic in olive oil, but do not brown. Add alligator meat and red pepper. Cook at med-high heat for ~10 minutes.

Red Beans and Rice

• 1lb. dry red beans.
• 1 fist-sized yellow onion, chopped.
• 1/2lb. smoked ham, chopped.
• ~1 large cloves garlic, minced.
• 1 cup white rice.

Cook the white rice according to standard instructions. (We use a microwave cooker, which makes perfect rice EVERY time.
Sautee garlic in olive oil, ~5 minutes. Boil dry beans ~5 minutes. Add garlic, ham, and onions. Boil ~2 hours. If you can blow on a single bean and make the skin crack, the beans are done. There should be some liquid left at the end. If you want it to be thicker, smash some of the beans while the pot is still boiling.

Serve beans over rice. The alligator can go on the side or on top. I tend to prefer to mix stuff like this around.

Notes:
Every now and then, we fail miserably. But we still learn.

The alligator was bad. It had a "muddy river-bottom" flavor that the boiling was supposed to remove. I imagine we didn't boil it long enough. Brian had said ~20 minutes, which we did, so I'm imagining more like 30-45 minutes. The meat was also a bit chewy, which longer boiling would theoretically correct.

The pan searing seemed boring. We ended up with muddy flavored, spicy meat. I would use less red pepper, and some other spices to add complexity.

One interesting idea that Casey came up with was kind of "east meets west and somewhere in between." It might be interesting to do this as a stir fry with a little bit of sesame oil and green onion. And more garlic.

Too much red pepper. It wasn't too spicy, it just didn't work.

We'll be trying this again some day. If anyone knows how to make this work, please let us know where we went wrong.