Horse Meat at Welcome to The Village Festival

At this festival, they don’t make a fuss about eating horse meat. In fact, they encourage it. Because why eat beef but not horse? Instead of exporting all our horse meat, we should simply eat it ourselves, according to the organizers of Welcome to The Village festival. And we couldn’t agree more.

Horse meat is wonderfully lean and tastes a little like a cross between beef and venison—it’s slightly sweet. Horse steak is best eaten rare or medium rare. You can also eat other parts of the animal: our favorite horse meat dish is Limburg-style zoervleisch, which is made from trimmings.

Sustainable

We export a lot of horse meat abroad, while importing other (waste) meat for the Dutch market. Not very logical and anything but sustainable. This transport causes significant emissions of pollutants. If we simply processed and ate horse meat from the Netherlands here, a more sustainable situation would arise. At Welcome to The Vilagge, they are convinced of this and cook various dishes made with Dutch horse meat.

The festival

Chef Willem Schaafsma (owner of restaurant Eindeloos in Leeuwarden) prepares dishes using pony meat at the Baaiduinen festival restaurant. You can order pony sausage, pony steak and pony tenderloin there. It fits perfectly with the organizers’ philosophy: food should be local, sustainable and delicious.

Besides delicious food, there is also plenty of music at the festival. Franz Ferdinand, Blaudzun and Rico & Sticks, for example, will perform.

Welcome to The Village was named the most innovative festival by the Nationale Evenementenprijzen and will take place this year on July 21, 22 and 23 in the Groene Ster recreational area, just outside Leeuwarden. Check the website for more information and tickets.

Image: Lucas Kemper