Recipe: Roo Tail (and mushroom) Soup

This is a combination of recipe and anatomy lesson. Read the whole thing before you start cooking.

You need:
1 onion
4 birds eye chillies
Half a celery with leaves
500 g mushrooms
2 green chillies
Coconut oil and butter or macadamia oil
Pepper
Salt
1 kg roo tail

How you do it:
In a large pot, cover your roo tail with approx 3.5L water. Like, nearly fill the pot. Whack in a ton of cracked sea salt and some pepper.

Roo tail has HEAPS of tendon and a whole lot of cartilage. Therefore, it’s scummy. Get the scum off your soup if you remember.

Cook it for like three hours or until you’re ready to move on.

Strain it into a bowl and let it sit (til cool enough to handle a lot), while you chop everything up.

Now the fun begins!

Anatomy 101

You know, don’t you, that kangaroos are macropods? And that their muscles are spirals in structure? All of a kangaroo’s power comes from its tail.; it’s why skippy can bound along for tens of kilometres without feeling like he’s gotten out of bed.

Well, almost.

So, you will find that sections of tail (it’s naturally in sections, joined by tendons) have the most amazing structure. This is them:

They are five- or six-pointed. Off each point is a tendon. Behind it rests threads of muscle, between each of which is also a thread of tendon.

The whole piece is wrapped in even more tendon. And then the pieces are linked together. Like this:

All of that white in the middle is not marrow. It’s cartilage. It goes soft and springy when it’s cooked.

Right, so, anatomy lesson over.

When your vegies are all chopped, cook them in coconut oil. Do it in whatever way feels good but you must leave the mushies til last. Mine goes onion+chillies, then celery, then mushrooms.

While they cook, strip your tail. Instructions are below. Wait until your mushies have lost all their water, and sucked it up again, before you put in your stock. If they resist, add some more fat. I sloshed in macadamia oil only because I’m saving my butter for cake.

How to strip roo tail – read the whole lot before attempting this please.

The trick is to lift and peel the outer tendons off. When they’re cooked they’re delightfully gooey but you can peel them if your direction of force is going around the section. Then you hook your fingers through to the bone and squeeze, and the muscle literally pops out in a whole piece. Alternatively,  you can put a tiny but of pressure on the muscle on the ends and do the same thing.

Either way, try and leave the tendons behind. Like this:

Now, it’s up to you whether you let your stock set to get the fat off it. I never do with roo because it’s not like any other meat. The fat levels are so low it’s the healthiest shit around.

When you’ve stripped all the tail pieces, you get something like this:

It’s about two hands full. If you can stop yourself eating it as you go.

At the end, rub the delicious gooeyness into your hands. It’s a fantastic moisturiser, especially if you’ve been digging in the garden all arvo like me.

Back to the soup
Anyway, after all of the above, your stock has been sitting happily. It looks like this:

Add it to your vegies.

Ok, so with your roo tail stock added, your soup looks and smells pretty amazing. I wish I had some garlic. Add it, lots of it, if you have some. It will make this better times a thousand.

Here she is:

Your final step is to squish out any bits of remaining tendon you can see in your meat (or leave ’em in, they’re soft and good for you). Chop the meat a bit and throw it in the soup.

Simmer for a little while, season to taste. Then turn it off and let it rest before you serve it with home-made bread.

Awww yisss. It’s fucking phenomenal. Seriously, it rivals my voodoo soup (recipe for which I have yet to post here).

Let me know what yours is like!