Cougar meat, for lack of a better term, is imaginably on the lean side. So, it comes as no surprise that the glistening pink meat undergoes a 6-8 hour cooking process, with a couple of similarities to the preparation of cochinita pibil, like an abundance of oranges. And because this is the “real America,” there’s also half a bottle of Coca-Cola thrown in, kinda like the "secret ingredient" in many carnitas preparations around the U.S. and Mexico.
Lastly, the meat gets shredded, seasoned, broiled, then thrown into some tortillas with a few dubious toppings like sour cream and shredded cheese. The video’s creator, one Back Country Connection, deems the final product “juicy.” And we can’t say we’re not a little epi-curious ourselves.
More than a few local readers will find the very existence of this recipe pretty audacious. Even if, unlike in Southern California, Montana hunters and the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks claim that mountain lions are thriving following years of preservation and wildlife management efforts.
Montana, as far as we can tell, having never visited, is not Los Angeles. Big Sky Country no doubt has a radically different culture of its own, perhaps placing dietary peccadilloes like tacos made with recently killed game into the same realm as other foreign delicacies we tend to object to, such as Japan’s tradition of eating whale. Or objectionable habits some of us enjoy right here at home, like consuming foie gras. Or whatever the hell goes into a McNugget.
While we’d never deign to consume our endangered, beloved mountain lions here in Southern California, we have to wonder if eating mountain lion tacos hunted by a single individual could possibly be any worse than ordering leathery asada tacos that have their roots in a feedlot.
While we ponder the deeper ethics of eating once-living creatures tucked inside of a warm tortilla, you can glimpse the recipe for pulled mountain lion tacos being made and explained below. Or bypass it completely, if you prefer to spend this time better by moisturizing your P-22 tat instead.
One of L.A. TACO's co-founders, Hadley Tomicki is a critic and journalist whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, and many other places.
Plus an Roman chef veteran in a Hollywood apartment, chocolate Cuba Libres, Uzbeki plov with lazer rice, and cochinita melts in a Silver Lake yard. Here are the best things to eat around Los Angeles (and San Juan Capistrano!) this weekend.
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The month-old strip mall taquería in Anaheim make all their flour tortillas from scratch using both lard and butter, resulting in an extremely tender vehicle for their juicy guisados like carne en su jugo, carne deshebrada, chile colorado, chile relleno, and chicharrón. Every tortilla is cooked to order, too.
