buffalo soup
This is some really tasty buffalo soup (gaeng juut nua kwai [à¹à¸à¸‡à¸ˆà¸¶à¸”เนื้à¸à¸„วาย]) that was prepared at a recent wedding I attended. I want to reiterate: it was really, really tasty. Part of the wedding routine was to purchase an entire buffalo and pig to prepare the massive amount of food required for the guests. You can see more details on the overall preparation in another post. I’m going to focus on preparing the buffalo soup here.
In the pictures below, you can see that the buffalo gets totally dismantled. Not an ounce of meat is spared and I’d be willing to bet even those bones will be used for something. Inside the large pot is what I believe to be brain pieces. That’s what I was told on two separate occasions, but one said it was buffalo and another said it was pig which leads me to wonder if it even is brain. It did look unlike any other meat I’ve ever seen (except possibly the pig head I’ve talked about before) so I will assume it is, indeed, brain material.
Once all the meat was gathered, it needed to be prepared for the soup. Buffalo meat is notoriously tough so it needed to be simmered for a long time to get it ready. No need for a lid when you have banana leaves! I should specify that this is actually meat from water buffaloes, not the buffalo that comes to mind for most Americans. Water Buffaloes are notoriously scrawny and with tough meat. Even so, the expert chefs prepared some perfectly tender buffalo meat for the gaeng juut. It reminded me of the taste and texture of roast beef and I enjoyed every spoonful. Most of the other foods were a bit too spicy for me.
no waste
the few leftovers
brain pieces
time to cook
the finished product
