Eat More Kangaroo (Recipes incl.)
November 5th 2008 22:37
Eat More Kangaroo
RECIPES AT THE BOTTOM OF ARTICLE!!!
I decided to write this article for two reasons, 1) Kangaroo is so bloody yummy and 2) to attempt to break the inbuilt thinking process that eating Skippy is wrong and weird. If you are a veggo then you are off the hook because meat is meat.
One point in particular that I find totally fascinating is that in the world we are the only country that actually eats the two animals on their coat of arms!
This story is written with the assistance of an article from a newspaper written by Jane Fryer.
One minute, he's bouncing happily through the outback, ears flapping, tail flopping, with not a care in the world.
The next, he's heralded as the latest superfood - delicious, nutritious and fabulously low fat - the natural solution to global warming, and 20.4 million Australians are being urged to "throw a few kanga bangers on the barbie".
Thanks to a special report commissioned by Greenpeace which claims that Aussies can dramatically reduce their carbon footprint by eating less beef and more of the local wildlife, suddenly everyone's terribly over-excited about kangaroos.
Why? It's all because they don't break wind.
Or, to put it rather more scientifically, whereas cows and sheep release vast quantities of methane through belching and flatulence, kangaroos release virtually none.
The report says cutting beef consumption by 20 per cent (and thus the amount of cattle reared) and substituting it with kangaroo steaks, mince, burgers, ribs and so on would reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by a staggering 15 megatons by 2020.
On top of their impressive personal hygiene, kangaroos make model livestock.
They need less food than sheep or cattle, are better adapted to drought and are far less damaging to the fragile topsoil than their sharply-hooved bovine counterparts.
And they don't taste bad, either. With a distinctive gamey flavour, very tender, best brushed with oil and cooked rare to medium rare (to stop it becoming dry and chewy), it looks just like prime roast beef.
But while kangaroo has long been considered an occasional exotic delicacy, eating it on an industrial scale instead of beef or lamb is a novel and highly controversial idea.
Granted, Aborigines have been happily tucking into kangaroo for 40,000 years -killing them with spears, pulling out the guts, lopping off the feet and tail, quartering, singeing the hair off on the camp fire and drinking the warm blood and fluids from the thorax while they wait for it to cook - but modern diners have struggled to embrace it. (I wonder why with that description Jane!!)
Even in today's less visceral and more vacuum-packed form.
The "Skippy factor" hasn't helped.
Modern Australians are uncharacteristically sentimental about an animal that has become a national icon and which pops up on the country's coat of arms (opposite an emu) and coins.
They claim it just feels wrong - disrespectful, almost - to be tucking into their national emblem.
The kangaroo industry, meanwhile, is doing its best to toughen them up and overcome their squeamishness and two years ago, amid much fanfare, it launched a five-year "eat roo" campaign.
There were specialist recipe books (invaluable if you fancied a seared kangaroo salad, smoked fillet of kangaroo with brioche and pear chutney, or maybe a nice bowl of kangaroo tail soup).
There were also new products (kangaroo microwave meals, kangaroo kebabs, kangaroo burgers) and a huge drive in supermarkets.
Many now have whole sections dedicated to kangaroo meat - steaks, mince, readymade microwave meals, barbecue packs, kanga-bangers, you name it - nestled between the beef and chicken.
There was even a competition to come up with a new name that wouldn't put diners off their dinner - a sort of equivalent to pork for pig and venison for new deer.
Sadly, not a great success - after 2,700 entries from 41 countries, "australus" was chosen, but was dismissed by restaurateurs as "silly" and "pathetic" and was too similar to a brand of cosmetics (called Australis) to catch on.
Today, kangaroo meat is a £100-million-a-year government sanctioned industry - in which a Code Of Practice For The Humane Shooting Of Kangaroos specifies the firearms that can be used in the killing, or "harvesting" of kangaroos.
It also requires that "all animals be head shot" and sets out procedures for the "humane dispatch of any pouch young".
But it needs to be put in context.
Despite all the hard work, Greenpeace and the kangaroo industry have a long slog ahead.
Of the 30 million kilos of kangaroo meat produced each year, Australians eat less than a third - 10 million kilos, as opposed to 70 million of beef - and Australian websites are awash with bloggers who call it "dogfood" or "Aussiehog" and claim they'd "rather eat my mother's pet cat".
The occasional restaurants feature it here and there as an exotic novelty, but it is far from a staple.
But Europe, it seems, are mad for it.
The French eat it in steaks.
The Belgians like a nice bit of fillet.
The Germans are partial to a warming tail soup and the Russians are particularly partial to sausages - so partial that they eat more kangaroo meat than Australia itself.
Kangaroo meat makes up more than half of all Australia's exports to Russia.
Kangaroo meat is low in cholesterol and fat - 2 per cent - and high in protein, iron, zinc and conjugated linoleic acid, which reduces blood pressure.
It also keeps for ages, because of its low fat content, and will sound exotic if you're having a dinner party.
It's enough to put a spring in your step - if you can just forget for a moment that you're eating poor Skippy.
Kangaroo meat is fairly cheap and totally affordable in Australia and the rest of the world. It is NOT beef and requires to be cooked differently or hence you become this naive fool that claims it tastes like leather. The trick is to cook it quick and hot if having it as a steak form. My lovely mother and uber supremo cook uses it all the time. She is putting together some great Kangaroo recipes for me to post online in the near future but one quick one she gave me for a BBQ is very simple.
BBQ Kangaroo Marinade
It Serves 4: combine in a bowl 2/3 cup plum sauce, 2/3 cup sweet chili sauce and grated ginger. Somewhere out there in supermarkets Trident make a Sweet Chili and Ginger sauce - she said this is perfect! Or just grate a 1 to 2 cm of fresh ginger in there. Then place in 4 Kangaroo steaks or fillets and marinate for as long as you want, the longer the better. I would suggest 48hrs but a few hours is fine if rushed. Then BBQ on a hot BBQ and not for long. It needs to be served rare to medium rare. EASY!!!
Another recipe posted in the Sydney Morning Heralds Good Living Guide this week is for:
Kangaroo Lasagne
You will need:
1tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped (I always use the purple onions - not as harsh)
1 clove of garlic, crushed (don't be shy - go for 2)
1kg Kangaroo mince (it's cheaper!!)
2X 400gm peeled tomatoes
1tsp oregano
2tbsp tomato paste
1 cup of water
75gm unsalted butter
50gm plain flour
750ml hot milk
100gm grated cheese
Instant lasagne sheets
Heat olive oil in a saucepan and fry onions and garlic until soft. Add meat and cook until brown. Add tomatoes and cook on high for 5mins. Mix in oregano. Stir in tomato paste and season with salt and pepper.
Add the water and cook gently for 90mins. While cooking the meat, make the bechamel sauce. Melt the butter in another small pot/pan and add the flour. Cook a little without browning. Allow to cool a bit and gradually stir in the milk with a wooden spoon. Cook this gently for 20min, then add the cheese but do not let it stick to the bottom of the pan (hence the word gently). Preheat oven to 200C.
Pour a cup of the meat sauce into the base of a lightly greased baking dish. Alternate layers of lasagne, meat and bechamel sauce finishing with sauce on top. Bake for one hour and voila - skippy is done!!
Try and substitute any mince meals with Kangaroo occasionally and see what you think!! It is better for you and the environment and don't think we will eat them to extinction - there are twice as many kangaroos in this country than there are humans!!
RECIPES AT THE BOTTOM OF ARTICLE!!!
I decided to write this article for two reasons, 1) Kangaroo is so bloody yummy and 2) to attempt to break the inbuilt thinking process that eating Skippy is wrong and weird. If you are a veggo then you are off the hook because meat is meat.
One point in particular that I find totally fascinating is that in the world we are the only country that actually eats the two animals on their coat of arms!
This story is written with the assistance of an article from a newspaper written by Jane Fryer.
One minute, he's bouncing happily through the outback, ears flapping, tail flopping, with not a care in the world.
The next, he's heralded as the latest superfood - delicious, nutritious and fabulously low fat - the natural solution to global warming, and 20.4 million Australians are being urged to "throw a few kanga bangers on the barbie".
Thanks to a special report commissioned by Greenpeace which claims that Aussies can dramatically reduce their carbon footprint by eating less beef and more of the local wildlife, suddenly everyone's terribly over-excited about kangaroos.
Why? It's all because they don't break wind.
Or, to put it rather more scientifically, whereas cows and sheep release vast quantities of methane through belching and flatulence, kangaroos release virtually none.
The report says cutting beef consumption by 20 per cent (and thus the amount of cattle reared) and substituting it with kangaroo steaks, mince, burgers, ribs and so on would reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by a staggering 15 megatons by 2020.
On top of their impressive personal hygiene, kangaroos make model livestock.
They need less food than sheep or cattle, are better adapted to drought and are far less damaging to the fragile topsoil than their sharply-hooved bovine counterparts.
And they don't taste bad, either. With a distinctive gamey flavour, very tender, best brushed with oil and cooked rare to medium rare (to stop it becoming dry and chewy), it looks just like prime roast beef.
But while kangaroo has long been considered an occasional exotic delicacy, eating it on an industrial scale instead of beef or lamb is a novel and highly controversial idea.
Granted, Aborigines have been happily tucking into kangaroo for 40,000 years -killing them with spears, pulling out the guts, lopping off the feet and tail, quartering, singeing the hair off on the camp fire and drinking the warm blood and fluids from the thorax while they wait for it to cook - but modern diners have struggled to embrace it. (I wonder why with that description Jane!!)
Even in today's less visceral and more vacuum-packed form.
The "Skippy factor" hasn't helped.
Modern Australians are uncharacteristically sentimental about an animal that has become a national icon and which pops up on the country's coat of arms (opposite an emu) and coins.
They claim it just feels wrong - disrespectful, almost - to be tucking into their national emblem.
The kangaroo industry, meanwhile, is doing its best to toughen them up and overcome their squeamishness and two years ago, amid much fanfare, it launched a five-year "eat roo" campaign.
There were specialist recipe books (invaluable if you fancied a seared kangaroo salad, smoked fillet of kangaroo with brioche and pear chutney, or maybe a nice bowl of kangaroo tail soup).
There were also new products (kangaroo microwave meals, kangaroo kebabs, kangaroo burgers) and a huge drive in supermarkets.
Many now have whole sections dedicated to kangaroo meat - steaks, mince, readymade microwave meals, barbecue packs, kanga-bangers, you name it - nestled between the beef and chicken.
There was even a competition to come up with a new name that wouldn't put diners off their dinner - a sort of equivalent to pork for pig and venison for new deer.
Sadly, not a great success - after 2,700 entries from 41 countries, "australus" was chosen, but was dismissed by restaurateurs as "silly" and "pathetic" and was too similar to a brand of cosmetics (called Australis) to catch on.
Today, kangaroo meat is a £100-million-a-year government sanctioned industry - in which a Code Of Practice For The Humane Shooting Of Kangaroos specifies the firearms that can be used in the killing, or "harvesting" of kangaroos.
It also requires that "all animals be head shot" and sets out procedures for the "humane dispatch of any pouch young".
But it needs to be put in context.
Despite all the hard work, Greenpeace and the kangaroo industry have a long slog ahead.
Of the 30 million kilos of kangaroo meat produced each year, Australians eat less than a third - 10 million kilos, as opposed to 70 million of beef - and Australian websites are awash with bloggers who call it "dogfood" or "Aussiehog" and claim they'd "rather eat my mother's pet cat".
The occasional restaurants feature it here and there as an exotic novelty, but it is far from a staple.
But Europe, it seems, are mad for it.
The French eat it in steaks.
The Belgians like a nice bit of fillet.
The Germans are partial to a warming tail soup and the Russians are particularly partial to sausages - so partial that they eat more kangaroo meat than Australia itself.
Kangaroo meat makes up more than half of all Australia's exports to Russia.
Kangaroo meat is low in cholesterol and fat - 2 per cent - and high in protein, iron, zinc and conjugated linoleic acid, which reduces blood pressure.
It also keeps for ages, because of its low fat content, and will sound exotic if you're having a dinner party.
It's enough to put a spring in your step - if you can just forget for a moment that you're eating poor Skippy.
Kangaroo meat is fairly cheap and totally affordable in Australia and the rest of the world. It is NOT beef and requires to be cooked differently or hence you become this naive fool that claims it tastes like leather. The trick is to cook it quick and hot if having it as a steak form. My lovely mother and uber supremo cook uses it all the time. She is putting together some great Kangaroo recipes for me to post online in the near future but one quick one she gave me for a BBQ is very simple.
BBQ Kangaroo Marinade
It Serves 4: combine in a bowl 2/3 cup plum sauce, 2/3 cup sweet chili sauce and grated ginger. Somewhere out there in supermarkets Trident make a Sweet Chili and Ginger sauce - she said this is perfect! Or just grate a 1 to 2 cm of fresh ginger in there. Then place in 4 Kangaroo steaks or fillets and marinate for as long as you want, the longer the better. I would suggest 48hrs but a few hours is fine if rushed. Then BBQ on a hot BBQ and not for long. It needs to be served rare to medium rare. EASY!!!
Another recipe posted in the Sydney Morning Heralds Good Living Guide this week is for:
Kangaroo Lasagne
You will need:
1tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped (I always use the purple onions - not as harsh)
1 clove of garlic, crushed (don't be shy - go for 2)
1kg Kangaroo mince (it's cheaper!!)
2X 400gm peeled tomatoes
1tsp oregano
2tbsp tomato paste
1 cup of water
75gm unsalted butter
50gm plain flour
750ml hot milk
100gm grated cheese
Instant lasagne sheets
Heat olive oil in a saucepan and fry onions and garlic until soft. Add meat and cook until brown. Add tomatoes and cook on high for 5mins. Mix in oregano. Stir in tomato paste and season with salt and pepper.
Add the water and cook gently for 90mins. While cooking the meat, make the bechamel sauce. Melt the butter in another small pot/pan and add the flour. Cook a little without browning. Allow to cool a bit and gradually stir in the milk with a wooden spoon. Cook this gently for 20min, then add the cheese but do not let it stick to the bottom of the pan (hence the word gently). Preheat oven to 200C.
Pour a cup of the meat sauce into the base of a lightly greased baking dish. Alternate layers of lasagne, meat and bechamel sauce finishing with sauce on top. Bake for one hour and voila - skippy is done!!
Try and substitute any mince meals with Kangaroo occasionally and see what you think!! It is better for you and the environment and don't think we will eat them to extinction - there are twice as many kangaroos in this country than there are humans!!
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Comment by Norm
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Comment by Nomad
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I also do roo jerky....
Comment by Jason King
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Nomad - nice one!! My mum makes an awesome Kangaroo curry slicing the fillets. And never had kangaroo jerky - would love to try that one day!!
Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
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Best meal I had was at some cafe/rest in Brunswick St, Fitzroy. Kangaroo medallions with baby beetroot on cous-cous. No idea what the drizzle was. I just remember really enjoying the meal.
It's a really interesting article.
Especially the Aboriginal factor. Like you say, they were eating it before white man came. Sometimes I wonder about the mentality of farmers. They clear their land to plant crops and raise sheep and cattle. Then sell the crops and wool to pay for feed to keep their sheep and cattle alive. Added to the transport costs in drought years. If they thought laterally? Many of them would have left the land like it was, and sold kangaroo meat. Imagine the difference in overheads. A few guns and bullets [or spears even] compared to tractors, reapers, headers, fertilizers, bulldozers, etc etc. But they shoot the kangaroos and leave them to rot in the paddocks to preserve the feed for the sheep and cattle and allow their crops to grow. The crops they have to sell to bring in feed for the sheep and cattle?
Comment by Jason King
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Comment by Morgan Bell
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its not rational, i know . . . it just seems a bit ummmmm . . . wrong! haha
we used to feed our cats kangaroo meat and thats just how ill always see it . . . im not the most adventurous eater!
great article though!
Comment by Jason King
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That is the thoughts of many Australians but I bet your cats were healthier for it. I dare you to try it once - maybe not in mince form if it reminds you of catfood lol. Try a Kanga fillet - or something I love saying a Kangabanga!!
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Comment by Morgan Bell
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im sure i will probably try it before i die (maybe!), heck im one of those people who has never even tried duck!
Comment by Jason King
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KC HIll - very jealous - that would have been an amazing experience. I got to spend some time in Darwin and Alice Springs and got to try all the Oz animals. Croc was my fave, followed by Kangaroo. Emu and Camel tasted similar and kind of "chickenish". Witchety grubs were just like chewing on wood and possum is so disgusting it needs so much spice on it that you can't taste how shit it is. LOL
Morgan - I double dare you!! And I only ate duck this year for the first time as I hated it as a kid - but OMG - I can't get enough now. Red Duck Curry from a Thai place will blow your mind!!!!
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And it IS good.
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DeAnne if you read again - it is available in the US - you just have to hunt it down. What state are you in Garrett?
Thanks for commenting Garrett!
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I do know that kangaroo is yummy though. I cooked roo yiros the other night, very good served over chips with the yummy sauce my husband puts together - he's a whiz with sauces and marinades!
The kangaroo yiros came from the game meat shop at the Adelaide Central Market - full of interesting food. If you're ever in Adelaide South Austrlai, give it a visit if you love food!
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MOst Australian themed restaurants in the US serve it - hope you can eat it again. It's so yummy - and really cheap over here, $3- for a steak for one to cook at home.
Thanks for popping in.
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