Sous vide kangaroo is my effort to improve planetary health
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I attended a lecture on Tuesday night about planetary health and the notion that the earth and its inhabitants are currently emerging from the holocene epoch and entering the anthropocene epoch or geological age. Apart from the obvious remedies, the notion of eating more vegetables and more sustainable protein sources was mentioned with kangaroo being described as an earth and human-friendly source of protein. I murmured that’s all very well but kangaroo tastes disgusting. People turned around and berated me. I wondered if any of them had tasted a decent steak or pork crackling or lamb cutlet.
Then it dawned on me that in my current ‘sous vide epoch’ I should try to sous vide some kangaroo.
The problem with kangaroo meat is that is can taste a bit gamey. Kangaroo meat is devoid of fat, so cooking can make it tough and very unpleasant.
Kangaroo stew is best made with a rock in the saucepan. When it’s finished cooking, throw out the roo and eat the rock!
Roo meat seems like a reasonable candidate for sous vide cooking.
I bought all the ingredients from Coles on Thursday evening.
Update (Monday 2018-0326)
For more of my thoughts on Planetary Health please visit My Thoughts and Stuff.
Recipe
- Kangaroo steak
- Iodised salt flakes
- Freshly cracked pepper
- Garlic powder
- Rosemary our Anzac floral emblem
- Celeriac
- Cream
- Cheese
- Poppy seeds
- Sesame seeds
- Fried shallots
- Queensland nuts
- Chilli flakes
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Season the kangaroo meat with the iodised salt, freshly cracked black pepper, and garlic powder.
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Before placing the roo meat into the vacuum bag, add a few little chunks of butter and some sprigs of rosemary.
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After sealing the bag, place it into the water bath which has reached 67 °C/153 °F and cook for 20 minutes then change the temperature to 57 °C/135 °F and cook for 100 minutes.
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Peel and dice the celeriac into 2 cm3 cubes.
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Put them into a microwave radiation safe pressure cooker and cover with tap water. Add a couple of teaspoons of iodised salt to the water and the cook with microwave radiation for 10 minutes on high.
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Once the internal pressure of the cooking vessel has equilibrated to atmospheric pressure, open the lid and drain the celeriac.
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Toss the celeriac into a food processor with some chunks of butter, Queensland nuts, freshly cracked black pepper, dried mixed herbs and chilli flakes and make a purée.
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Add some grated cheese and seeds to the purée to stiffen it up.
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After the 2 hours for the roo meat, remove the bag from the water bath and remove the roo meat from the bag.
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Pat the kangaroo dry all over with paper towel.
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Sear all the surfaces in a hot pan and touch up with a cook's blow torch.
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Plate up with the stiff celeriac purée in the bottom of a shallow bowl and then place the seared roo meat on top.
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Shoot a photograph.
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Eat the meal.
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Remember to savour it because after all, by eating roo meat you're helping planetary health.
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Wash the dishes.
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Write the recipe.
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Write the blog post.
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Hope your friends and even people who aren't friends share this recipe post on social media.
Disclaimer
I have no culinary training nor qualifications. This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner.
The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste. I deliberately do not calculate energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.
Photographs
Here is a gallery of photographs.
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Questions and answers
Why the split temperatures for cooking the meat?
The main parasite associated with roo meat is Toxoplasma gondii. This is an important parasite which can infect humans and can cause a glandular fever like illness, congenital infections, intrauterine fetal death and brain infections in immunocompromised hosts.
Outbreaks of toxoplasmosis have occurred in Australia after eating macropod meat. Ideally, the meat should have been frozen at between –20 °C/–4 °F and –10 °C/14 °F for up to 3 days to kill tissue cysts. Household refrigerator/freezers can’t guarantee these low temperatures.
Heating the infected muscle bundles to 67 °C/153 °F will also kill tissue cysts. I figured keeping the meat in the water bath set at this temperature for 20 minutes would be sufficient to kill the tissue cysts.
Why do you think planetary health is important?
The question should be, why isn’t everyone concerned with planetary health?
What did you think of the flavour of the roo meat?
It was better than I thought. I could eat this again. The meat was really tender and it didn’t taste gamey at all.
What’s the best way to humanely dispatch a kangaroo?
Using a trained roo killer who is properly equipped and permitted to shoot roos without being impeded by government policy and protestors.
Did you watch Skippy the Bush Kangaroo as a kid?
Too right I did. I had a crush on Clancy (played by Liza Goddard). I hope you watch the video at the beginning of this post.
So you mixed Skippy and Vegemite?
Yep, and last night I dropped a random yummy on how I make the Vegemite celeriac mash.
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Final words
I loved this meal. I hope you can try it too. If you do, please let me know how yours went.
Here are a video and infographic about planetary health.
Read the full Lancet Commission:
The Lancet: Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health
Pour yourself a nice glass of red.
Use fillet rather than kangaroo “steak”, mush up a kiwi fruit and marinate your roo in it for two hours.
Not longer as the meat will fall apart and turn to paste.
Not less as it will be tough.
Bring your pan to screaming hot with a high smoke point oil like peanut (not olive) Sear the outside of the roo until a nice crust has formed. It should still be very rare.
Don’t over crowd your pan!!!! It doesn’t matter if you have to do it in batches.
Take the meat off and let it rest.
Pour into the pan a stack of nice red wine and an equal amount of sweet chilli sauce (buy it at asian grocery stores for half the price of supermarkets. Don’t buy Trident brand, their seeds stay too hard)
Reduce until its around 2/3 or it’s original volume. Make sure you keep it on the move because the sweet chilli sauce will burn, and make sure you deglaze the pan to get all that nice action off the bottom.
Turn down the heat.
Cut the fillet into nice chunky slices (maybe 2cm thick). Add back into the sauce for a time that depends on how rare it was when you put it in, and how rare you want to it be. Simmer very gently.
I eat mine medium rare.
Serve on a bed of mash made with half white potato, and half red sweet potato. Put down a bed of the mash, and spoon some of the sauce over it, then add the roo slices in a nice fan or similar. It’s also nice to roll the plate so the sauce covers the bottom evenly just for visual effect.
Serve with whatever other veggies you feel like. Roast vegies work best. Potatoes, pumpkin, carrots, broccoli roasted in olive oil and balsamic vinegar… Stuff like that.
I promice you will think it’s the best red meat you ever ate.
Thanks for the recipe and the tip about using Chinese gooseberry to tenderise the roo meat. Much appreciated.
I used to watch Skippy as well. It went on for years in the UK. I had the idea that most Australian kids would have a pet kangaroo, much like we had dogs.
In Canberra we have so many kangaroos living in and around the suburbs. They are so plentiful the local council has an annual cull.
We actually enjoy kangaroo meat, and planetary health, and sous vide cooking. I don’t know why I didn’t think to combine these earlier! Glad you included the info about the parasites and a safe cooking temperature, that’s useful to know.
Thanks Elissa. I like to think Yummy Lummy can add a unique twist to food blogging 😂
I enjoyed this post for many reasons.
It is fun to see what is ok to eat in other countries that Americans would frown on. One of my friends went to …not sure where she went, but while there, she had puffin. Boy, did she get razzed for that!!!
I loved the Skippy promo. It was of that time period when animal stories were huge. Flipper, Lassie, later the one about the guy with the bear and even later, the orca.
Thanks, Kris. I’ll try anything once. Was the puffin roasted?
I loved watching Skippy and Flipper and Lassie and even Rin Tin Tin.
I forgot Rin Tin Tin….BAD TV viewer!
I’m not sure how the puffin was served. She said it was greasy.
Now I’m curious about how puffin might taste roasted.
I’m pretty sure finding kangaroo meat here in the States is not as easy as it is there.
Yes, we have a big supply.
I don’t have anything against eating kangaroo meat. I ate it quite a bit when I lived in Singapore served with vegetables in a hot claypot, sort of like a stew. To me, kangaroo tastes close to beef. That said, it’s not a meat I eat anymore these days, don’t even think of buying it and like you I prefer steak fillet. Good to hear it went well…maybe stick with the steaks if that is what you prefer lol.
Thanks Mabel.
I was surprised by how good it tasted.
It may not be a regular thing. I will eat more steak though 😃😃😃
People berated you for not liking kangraroo? I can’t say that I am overly fond of it and rarely order it. In fact I don’t see it often on restaurant menus. To me, it was the smell of it cooking that I wasn’t fond of.
That was my feeling too Lorraine. Past experience seeing someone else cooking and the smell was awful. Sous vide though fixed that. I’d still prefer a fillet steak though 🤣