For almost a whole week I have been sitting in front of my computer screen, wondering how to present this recipe in a way that is appealing and acceptable to our still fairly conservative public. π Alas β my neurons cannot cope with the task, so I will speak plainly and without any circling around, and try to explain what kangaroo meat is and what on earth you eat it with.πΈ So, if by some means a few pieces of kangaroo fillet have found their way into your home and you haven't the faintest idea what to do with them, I warmly invite you to finish reading this post and make a kangaroo salad, which is guaranteed to delight both you and your taste buds!
First of all, I would like to talk about the meat itself, because in getting ready to cook kangaroo I ran into a rather irrational moral rejection from the people around me. Well, I am going to disappoint you β kangaroo is neither exotic nor rare; perhaps a little out of the ordinary, but only outside Australia. What most people have never even stopped to consider (myself included) is that kangaroo meat is EXCEPTIONALLY kind to the environment. Kangaroos, unlike cows, bulls, pigs, sheep and other hoofed animals, are soft-footed, which means they do FAR, FAR less damage to nature (in this case to the land and the soil) than hoofed animals, whose farming leads to overgrazing (in short, intensive grazing damages the soil's plant cover, which causes increased erosion). On top of that, there is no such thing as a kangaroo farm; at present absolutely all kangaroo meat is βwild in originβ β the kangaroos live in their natural environment, feed not on fodder but on food growing naturally in the wild, and experience no stress (unlike flea-covered, wounded, featherless hens in cages that have never seen the sun), and hunters take them and sell them to buyers under strict Australian environmental rules and laws (much like wild game in Lithuania). Detailed studies have also been carried out showing that kangaroos emit a laughably small amount of methane compared with the various cattle kept on farms and in feedlots. I won't go on any further β you have already understood that kangaroos are extraordinarily kind to the environment.π
And now about the meat itself. The reasons I have just mentioned β the absence of stress, the natural diet and life in the wild β give kangaroo meat exceptionally high quality, and its nutritional value is genuinely enviable. It is an extremely lean red meat with less than 2% fat. It also contains very little saturated and trans fat. And the best part is that kangaroo is recognised as the greatest known source of CLA (CLA β conjugated linoleic acid, important for weight regulation and heart disease prevention, and with anti-carcinogenic properties), that is, as much as 5 times more CLA than other kinds of meat! π
I brought the kangaroo home and sat there pleased with myself. I thought it would be a very exotic meat, but one quick google made me realise it was only me who had turned it into something so exotic π Australians happily grill kangaroo burgers, you can find kangaroo mince in almost any Australian shop (which, by the way, is dirt cheap! π), and restaurants abroad certainly do cook dishes with this meat (steaks are especially popular). Even athletes eat it while building muscle mass.πͺ
Fun fact β the kangaroo population in Australia is larger than the number of people in the country.β
So what does kangaroo actually taste like? Good question. π€ If I hadn't known what I was eating β I would have said unequivocally that it was beef. I would have bet a million euros that it was beef and nothing else π The texture, the flavour, the appearance β everything reminded me of beef. But one thing is different: kangaroo doesn't have that intrusive smell beef has (which is the sole reason I don't like beef). But talking about someone else's taste is like licking honey through glass. Shall we just go and finally make these blessed salads? ππ₯
