Kangaroo Steak: It's Wild

We had Andrew home from UCLA over the weekend and Rachael, Nate and bambinos up for dinner on Sunday, so it was time to have something unusual. Kangaroo qualified. Kangaroo meat comes from Australia where wild kangaroos are shot and killed by professional hunters. There are no commercially farm-raised kangaroos. I've looked at a chart of kangaroo meat cuts, but it is difficult to determine what part of the kangaroo the "medallions" come from. My guess it is from the thigh portion of the legs which are large and meaty. Kangaroo meat is very lean, less than 2% fat.

It is recommended to cook the meat rare or medium rare, because it has so little fat content. That's just the way I like my meat, so no problem. Because I've not tasted kangaroo before, I didn't want to cover up any of the natural flavor. So I put the kangaroo steaks directly on the grill - no marinade, no salt (a number of websites recommend a coating of olive oil).

Because the meat was uneven and quite thick in spots, I was concerned about it cooking evenly.

After a while on the top rack, I put the steaks on the lower rack of the grill.

The meat was cooked perfectly: a nice grilled taste on the outside and moist, juicy and red on the inside.

We cut the meat in to small bites so that everyone could sample. The reaction was mixed. Andrew thought it tasted like liver. Rachael thought it had a sour flavor. It had a definite gamey, wild flavor. We only cooked a pound and we had quite a bit left over, although in deference to the kangaroo, we were also eating a crock-pot pot roast at the same time.

If I have kangaroo again, I will probably do something to mix up the taste a bit. It was fun to try, but not at the top of the culinary list.