Edible Camel Products

This may come as a surprise, but camels are edible.  So is the stuff that comes out of them.

Cheese: Camel cheese is incredibly hard to make precisely because it is so low in fat.  In fact, it’s more difficult to make cheese from camel milk than any other dairy animal. What does it taste like?  It has a brie-like consistency with a gooey center.  The flavor is gamey, a bit like goat cheese.

If you want to see all the steps, here’s a video, complete with creepy music: ⇒

Milk (including milk chocolate and ice cream): Camel milk is 50% lower in fat than cow’s milk, has 3-5 times the vitamin C (but lower in vitamin A and B12), and is easier to digest.  It also costs $96 for six pints (the minimum order).  But hey, you could always find five friends who want a pint and then it’s only $16.

What does it taste like?  It’s sweeter than cow’s milk, depending on what the camel has been eating.  It’s earthier and slightly saltier.

Butter: What’s harder to make than camel cheese?  Camel butter.

So difficult, in fact, that it’s mostly used as a medicine or hair pomade.

It’s an elaborate process – the milk has to be boiled, cooled, mixed with culture, fermented, churned, and mixed with cold water – all at very precise temperatures.

Meat: Camel meat is lean and tough.  The best way to get around this is to mix the meat with fat from the hump.  It makes reasonably good hot dogs and sausages.  If you get a relatively young camel, you can cut the steak into strips and cook them on hot coals, preferably out in the desert.  Or you can make the largest menu item in the world – whole stuffed camel.  You basically take a camel and stuff it with another animal (like a sheep) and then stuff that with something smaller (like a chicken) and then stuff that with a bunch of eggs.  Then put it on a spit and roast it for a really long time.