I've noticed in the butchery near here expensive packs of ostrich meat. It looks very like lean beef fillet medallions.
Knowing how easy it is to totally screw up high-priced cuts of meat with lousy cooking techniques, I'd welcome the advice of anyone here.
Ostrich: Grill, fry, bake, stew, schnitzel, burgers? Rare, medium, well-cooked. Hot or cold? What sauces and accompaniments?
M. Escoffier is no help at all. Frogs, snails, and inoffensive birdlings, yes --- ostriches, no.
All I can come up with from my cookbook collection is a tip that "a young small emu may be skinned and cleaned and stuffed the same as a goose or swan. Roast the same as for a leg. Serve whole and carve at the table".
Yes, well, an exhibition of culinary whittling like that would give the in-laws a splendidly juicy topic of recrimination to chew over for the next fifty years. (Not to mention food for an uninhibited campaign of blackmail, the emu being a protected species, and all.)
Any thoughts?
It's a very, very lean meat. Think beef fillet or venison. So most places will either cook it like beef fillet (flash sealed then served with a sauce) or marinade it in something witha higher oil content.
So any venison or fillet steak idea works well with ostrich. Emu is quite different.
IMHO ostrich is a waste of money as it has almost no flavour. It is also very easy to overcook, turning it rubbery. Yes, I have wasted money on the stuff in the past.
I had a lot of great tasting ostrich when I was in South Africa. It was nevery rubbery and never tasted ehhhhh. It was always cooked the same way you would cook an expensive filet of beef steak --- grilled at a hot temperature on both sides and a perfect medium rare in the centre. If it is seasoned right, you certainly don't need a sauce with it.
My cousin once used ground ostrich in place of sausage on a pizza she made and it wasn't very good. I don't think I'd ever buy it...
trusted partner
