Michael Ruhlman, a food writer who has penned books with the likes of Thomas Keller (The French Laundry), has an interesting thread on his blog about cooking balls (yes, the ones between legs). I haven’t put a lot of thought into the ethics of eating balls, or castrating for that matter, or whether these bits demand their own particular consideration vis-a-vis the rest of the animal. But the recipe-intensive discussion is amusing, so click ahead (as long as you’re not a vegetarian).
My immediate take: if you’re going to eat meat, why waste the offal and balls or anything else for that matter? In beef cattle, only 20 percent of the animal amounts to steaks — the rest is low-grade hamburger, bones, organs, etc., that usually end up in a rendering plant. So perhaps this is a useful exercise after all, in turning a waste stream into dinner.
