Road Kill Roo Roast

A few years ago, Ron was shooting rabbits for a living out in the North West of N.S.W with a couple of other blokes. When they were preparing to go, funds were very low so they spent most of their money on fuel and bullets. The only food they took with them was what they already had laying about the place. This consisted of a fifty kilo bag of spuds, a twenty kilo bag of onions a big bag of dried peas and a box full of sauces and herbs. For meat they lived entirely on what they shot and trapped.

Because of the naturally low fat content of wild meat the fat just dripped off all of them so that when they returned a few months later they were all a lot slimmer and healthier than ever before. You will notice in this recipe that I use cooking fat, If you don’t the roast will be very dry and not as nice to eat, because of the lack of natural fat in the meat.

What you need:

  • Roo leg or beef or lamb
  • Worcestershire Sauce
  • Garlic cloves
  • Mixed herbs
  • Half a cup of cooking fat if using roo leg
  • Bottle of favourite Australian Red Wine
  • Cup of water

What you do

Stab knife into leg, (the Roo’s leg not your leg), and slip garlic cloves down the slits as close to the bone as you can get. Do this in about four places.

Splash Worcestershire sauce all over meat and pour some down into the slits as well. Sprinkle mixed herbs over the top and down the slits also.

Chuck roast in camp oven, then pour in the water, and add the lump of fat to one side of the meat. Throw the oven on the coals and get it simmering steadily but not too fast, if you cook it too quick it will be tough. Once it has settled down to a good cooking rate, lift the lid and splash a liberal amount of the red wine over the whole show. Don’t lift the lid for another hour and a half. When the time is up lift the lid and have a bit of a gander at your masterpiece. The aroma alone will be fantastic.

If you bought the meat from a butchers shop it will no doubt be falling off the bone by now, so remove the camp oven from the coals and put a big heap of really hot ones on the lid for about ten minutes, just to brown the top off.

If using roadkill then check progress of cooking by inspecting one of the slits, when it is cooked right down to the bone you know its getting close. Normally it will need cooking for at least another hour to be done properly. Remember you’re in the bush now so just relax and enjoy a bottle or two of Australian red and a bit of bush poetry reciting, the longer your roast cooks for the better the eating will be.

Tricks & Tips

Serve with baked vegies.

We usually throw in a couple of peeled whole onions right at the start, there will be nothing left of them by the time it is cooked but they always impart that little bit of extra flavour.

Also I like to start the cooking early in the afternoon, it only takes a few minutes to throw it together and once it is in the oven the less the lid is removed and the longer it cooks the better. It doesnt even matter if you dont go near it for a few hours and the coals die down so that it is barely cooking, just stoke it back up and continue fishing or whatever your doing.

Probably not a good idea to go around picking up road kills at random.

Rating:

Bush tucker at its best

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