Aotearoa and Australia · Volume 01, Fire, the Stone Trap and the Reef Garden · Cooked by cue
Kangaroo tail
Pan-continental
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Researched
- 22 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Kangaroo tail, singed of fur, then cooked whole in hot coals or a ground oven. This is a specific, whole-cut traditional dish, and this chapter keeps it deliberately distinct from the kangaroo fillet steak now sold by British game butchers, a different product from a different part of the animal, with no traditional or ceremonial weight attached to it in any UK retailer's own listing.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. Several hours, mostly unattended.
Ingredients
No written recipe exists for kangaroo tail: it is cooked in the coals and sand by cue, and the chapter gives the method as it is told on country.
- 1 whole kangaroo tail
- hot coals or a ground oven
Method
- Singe the tail of any remaining fur over open flame.
- Cook whole, buried in hot coals or laid in a ground oven, for several hours, until the meat is fully tender and pulls easily from the bone.
What a modern chef changes
Kangaroo-tail bourguignon
Rung 2
Method
- Braise the tail sous vide at a controlled low temperature over several hours, reproducing the ground oven's long, even tenderising without the risk of a home coal fire running hot or cold.
- Build a bourguignon-style sauce around the braising liquid, reduced separately and strained through a chinois for a clean, glossy finish.
- Finish the tail on a Big Green Egg run direct and hot, for a brief, deliberate char on the exterior before serving, echoing the coal-cooked original's surface without needing hours of direct fire.
Notes
After Nornie Bero's kangaroo-tail bourguignon, served at Big Esso, Melbourne.