How to make funnel cake
Foie gras is a popular and well-known delicacy in French cuisine. Its flavour is rich, buttery, and delicate, unlike an ordinary duck or goose liver. The technique of gavage dates as far back as 2500 How to make funnel cake, when the ancient Egyptians began keeping birds for food and deliberately fattened the birds through force-feeding.
Gavage-based foie gras production is controversial, due mainly to animal welfare concerns about force-feeding, intensive housing and husbandry, and enlarging the liver to 10 times its usual volume. A number of countries and jurisdictions have laws against force-feeding and the production, import, or sale of foie gras. As early as 2500 BC, the ancient Egyptians learned that many birds could be fattened through forced overfeeding and began this practice. Whether they particularly sought the fattened livers of birds as a delicacy remains undetermined. The practice of goose fattening spread from Egypt to the Mediterranean.
The earliest reference to fattened geese is from the 5th-century-BC Greek poet Cratinus, who wrote of geese-fatteners, yet Egypt maintained its reputation as the source for fattened geese. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book VIII. Hellenistic Alexandria, since much of Roman luxury cuisine was of Greek inspiration. After the fall of the Roman empire, goose liver temporarily vanished from European cuisine. Some claim that Gallic farmers preserved the foie gras tradition until the rest of Europe rediscovered it centuries later, but the medieval French peasant’s food animals were mainly pigs and sheep. The Judaic dietary law, Kashrut, forbade lard as a cooking medium, and butter, too, was proscribed as an alternative since Kashrut also prohibited mixing meat and dairy products.
Appreciation of fattened goose liver spread to gastronomes outside the Jewish community, who could buy in the local Jewish ghetto of their cities. This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: Figures are not up to date, table is very dated by now. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Approximately 30,000 Hungarian goose farmers are dependent on the foie gras industry. French food companies spice, process, and cook the foie gras so it may be sold as a French product in its domestic and export markets.
Total French consumption of foie gras this year was 19,000 tonnes. The demand for foie gras in the Far East is such that China has become a sizeable producer. Madagascar is a small but rapidly growing producer of high-quality foie gras. 5 million mule ducks were raised for foie gras on 800 farms, making Bulgaria the second-largest European producer. This required the force-feeding of around 38 million ducks and geese. World production in 2015 is estimated as 27,000 tonnes. 23,000 tonnes of duck foie gras and 2,000 tonnes of goose foie gras.
French population supported a ban on force-feeding. In late 2015, there were several outbreaks of the highly contagious H5N1 bird flu in France, which escalated in 2016. This led to Algeria, China, Egypt, Japan, Morocco, South Korea, Thailand and Tunisia banning French poultry exports, including foie gras, and France to initiate increased bio-security protocols which will cost an estimated 220 million euros. The largest producer in the United States is Hudson Valley Foie Gras, which kills approximately 350,000 ducks annually.
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Fully cooked preparations are generally sold in either glass containers or metal cans for long-term preservation. Whole, fresh foie gras is usually unavailable in France outside Christmas, except in some producers’ markets in the producing regions. Frozen whole foie gras sometimes is sold in French supermarkets. Whole foie gras is readily available from gourmet retailers in Canada, the United States, Hungary, Argentina and regions with a sizeable market for the product. In the US, raw foie gras is classified as Grade A, B or C.
Grade A is typically the highest in fat and especially suited for low-temperature preparation because the veins are relatively few and the resulting terrine will be more aesthetically appealing because it displays little blood. Traditionally, foie gras was produced from special breeds of geese. 2017 due to outbreaks of bird flu. After hatching, the Mulard ducklings are sexed. Males put on more weight than females, so the females are slaughtered. Individual cages are used in some farms producing foie gras.
The basis of foie gras production is the ability that some waterfowl have to expand their esophagus and to gain weight, particularly in the liver, in preparation for migration. Wild geese may consume 300 grams of protein and another 800 grams of grasses per day. The pre-force feeding phase consists of three stages. The birds are moved outside to feed on grasses ad libitum. The birds are given additional feed, but access to this is limited by time. This stage aims to take advantage of the natural dilation capacity of the esophagus of some wildfowl. The birds are brought inside for gradually longer periods while introduced to a high-starch diet.
