Rocky Mountain Oysters
In Eastern Montana I was raised on a ranch. Every year in the spring all the local ranchers brand their cattle. It is a big community gathering for a couple months where basically every day there is a branding, sometimes more than one. Everyone in the community helps out the other ranchers. We help with yours and you help with ours. It was against our family policy to get paid by the other ranchers, but there is plenty of beverages and food to be consumed. A personal favorite that I ate every day was rocky mountain oysters. Now these are not your every day oysters, in fact they aren’t even oysters at all. They consist of sterling (year old male cattle) testicles. When we are branding, there are designated jobs for everyone; branders, ropers, rastellers, and cutters. The people that cut, cut the testicles off of the sterling’s, spray on a disinfectant and put the testicles in a bucket of water. The branders use a steel cylinder object that is usually six inches in circumference and three feet long, it also has an open area to set the branding irons in, and it is elevated in the air at about three feet by legs similar to table legs. To keep the irons hot there is a propane gas line that is run to the inside of the cylinder so there is a constant flame. When we would get hungry during the branding we would take the testicles from the bucket and cook them on the branding iron. But before we would put them on the makeshift grill there is very thin layer of skin on the outside of the oysters that needs to be taken off. So we would take our pocket knives and skin the oysters, then cook them. The oysters themselves are typically two inches long by one inch wide. They are in the shape of a very small football minus the pointy ends. The color of them was a whitish-peach look uncooked and then they got darker after they were heated up. To cook them we would leave them on the”grill” for about five minutes, rolling them onto the uncooked sides every minute. These things were so tasty that there was no need for any kind of spices or sauces to cover up the original taste. I know this sounds redundant but to me growing up they tasted similar to chicken. The texture was like pork, not too chewy but at the same time not very slimy like I had thought they would be. I was very weary of eating these at my first branding but after being talked into it I could not stop eating them. After every branding the people would gather back at the house for a home cooked dinner. Many times the hosts would have rocky mountain oysters all cooked up with spices and what not, but after eating them all day I never really ventured into them for dinner, just a snack.
