Australian · Soup

Kangaroo Tail Soup

Intermediate
40 min
roughly 3 of 4 for cost

umami-deep Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes.

Ingredients

1.5 kg kangaroo tail, cut through the joints into 5 cm lengths
30 ml vegetable oil
200 g onion, diced
150 g carrot, diced
150 g celery, diced
40 g plain flour
2 L beef stock
400 g tinned tomatoes, crushed
2 bay leaves
6 g fine salt
3 g black pepper
60 ml dry sherry
15 ml Worcestershire sauce

Equipment

Sheet pan

The skills inside

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil Salted water & the float test

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · fish · celery · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Dry the tail pieces and brown them hard in the oil in batches until the cut faces are deep brown, because a crowded pan steams them and there is no fond.
Soften the vegetables in the same pot, stir in the flour and cook it until it smells of biscuit, then pour in the stock and tomatoes and add the bay.
Return the tail, bring it to a bare shiver and hold it there for 3 hours; at a rolling boil the fat shears into the broth and it turns cloudy and greasy. 180 min
Lift the tail out, strip the meat from the bones and return it, then spread the soup into shallow trays so it cools quickly, refrigerate it and lift off the set fat. Never put the whole deep pot in the fridge: gelatine slows convection and the middle sits warm for hours.
Reheat with the sherry and Worcestershire and taste again for salt, because gelatine dulls seasoning.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes

The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.

Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.

Salted water & the float test 188 recipes

The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.

Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.

At the Table

The Pour: Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
Also Right: Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
From the Taps: Amber ale
Zero-Proof: Sparkling water, make room

Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Kangaroo Tail Soup The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Australian kitchen