Kangaroo Pot Pies

No, that's not a funny headline meant to draw you into some post about writing... that really is the recipe of the day!

We took the Geeky Kids shopping the other day, and while the Jr. Mad Scientist was deeply suspicious of the 'exotic meats' freezer, the Little Man enthusiastically picked out kangaroo meat to be his adventure in eating. We got a pound of ground "Roo, on sale for $7.99 (which, considering the price of beef recently, wasn't all that terrible in a relative way).

One pound of ground kangaroo!

Then came the fun part. How do you cook kangaroo? I started by asking Australian friends, who helpfully played along by letting us know that it would be very lean, and to treat it like I would venison. That was a big help. I surfed the web the way I usually do when I'm developing a new recipe, and came up with a website hosted in Australia, devoted to Kangaroo recipes. Here, I found the recipe for Spicy Roo Hot-Pots that I would modify.

An individual Kangaroo Pot Pie.

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While we were working on the recipe, we tasted some of the kangaroo meat after it was fully cooked, but before we added other ingredients. It's faintly gamy, not even as strong as goat, and a touch sweeter than beef, which it is very similar to. My son pronounced it yummy. The Jr. Mad Scientist remained deeply, deeply suspicious.

This was a fun recipe to make. We'll no doubt do it again, probably with boring beef, though. It reminded me a bit of stroganoff. I'm sure that the individual pots with edible lids raised the appeal to the kids by a huge factor, they really liked that. It would probably be easy to do with a recipe of pie crust, too.

The First Reader assessed them as being the same as they would have been had we used ground beef. The Jr. Mad scientist deigned to taste hers. Then, when her brother couldn't finish his, she finished it for him.

Prepping the filo dough with melted butter.

The concoction simmering in a skillet.

The heavy soup mugs I was using, with their pastry lids on.

golden-brown and crispy lids!