“Ravenous Couple” gets the Kangaroo Meat!

adminAll Recipes, General 44 Comments

Ok, Ravenous Couple.  Uncle.  The staff here at MarxFoods takes immense pride in our adventurous eater credentials, but with balut duck embryos AND congealed duck blood pizza you’ve got us beat.  Congratulations!

Unfortunately the kangaroo meat supply has fluctuated and we’re very briefly out of stock again, so you get to choose from two goodies.

Either:
    A)    The promised 10lb case of kangaroo burgers, shipped as soon as they hit the US (they’re on their way from Australia).
    B)     A $200 credit to use when you want, how you want, on anything in the Marx Foods store.

To everyone else, thanks for entering!  We really enjoyed reading all your exciting culinary adventures. 

Some that we felt were particularly worthy of Honorable Mention status:
  ● Rosemary Morsani’s lifetime of offal adventures
  ● Frieda’s husband and his fried scorpions
  ● Nicole O’s live grasshoppers                
  ● Joe’s roly poly bugs

And of course,
  ● Doggybloggy’s “rabies-inducing” pancakes

If you haven’t read your fellow entrants’ stories, you totally should, they’re all still listed in the comments below.  Keep an eye on the Marx Foods blog…we’ll be doing something else fun soon!

Comments 44

  1. Cooking in my house isn’t all that adventurous, at least not beyond scraping fuzz off of bread and eating it anyway. Or cutting around the mold in cheese. But that’s normal, right? 😉 It’s my husband who’s the more nutty one, and I know he’d go bizerk over these burgers, so I’d love to win them for him!

    As a kid my husband was given Rocky Mountain Oysters by his dad, who introduced them as a delicious delicacy. He later told him what they really were, poor kid. So cruel! You’d think he’d learn his lesson, but no. A few years ago drank an entire bottle of Frank’s Red Hot on a dare. He wasn’t a happy camper about that one, but somehow, it’s still like the elixir of the Gods to him.

  3. That’s a tough one. I love ostrich, which many people find unusual. My fiance has had balut before, not an experience I plan on having!

  6. I’d have to say the most exotic thing I’ve eaten is probably guinea pig. I had it two ways, grilled and in some sauce; grilled was better, but it was surprising to find out that guinea pig is kind of greasy.

    Recently I had sea cucumber in some dumplings. Those were delicious, but to me not as exotic as the rodent.

    Perhaps the grossest things I’ve eaten are actually fruits in India. Jackfruit really does not agree with me; it’s slimy, smells god-awful, and oddly tastes like chicken when prepared in a curry. If you ever have the opportunity to taste the fruit a cashew grows on, don’t; it’s rather like an unripe persimmon and something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

  7. When I was living in Alaska, my adopted Indian grandmother made me reindeer sausage. They ate them like hotdogs on buns. One of the girl’s I was with was a little shocked because she thought reindeer were a fictional character—like unicorns. haha

  8. I’m a pretty adventurous eater and will try anything at least once. I’ve had my share of pig ears..pig’s tail…and several other piggy parts. I’ve actually even had kangaroo meat in a stew once..it was delicious.

    What takes the cake though. My 22nd birthday I talked my then boyfriend into taking me to a Japanese place for dinner. Wanting to try something different I decided on the eel. After appetizers our waiter came to the table with a small box and placed it in front of me. I was so excited. My thought was that my boyfriend had told them it was my birthday and was having them bring me my gift. Of course at that time I was thinking…could it be a ring??

    Well was I surprised when I opened the box lid and there in the middle of it was the entire eel, still whole. Yikes! so much for the ring…but the eel was delicious. Ended up being one of the best things I’d ever eaten and yes we did eventually get married just not that night.

  9. ok, I don’t think I can beat any of the comments so far. So I’ll tell you about one of my favorite meals from my childhood that Americans find really strange.

    1) take a hotdog. boil it.
    2) open a can of peas. drain.
    3) mix peas with mayonnaise. put on a plate
    4) place boiled hotdog next to peas (sans bun!!!)
    5) pour diet pepsi or coke into a glass with ice. enjoy.

  10. My ‘strange’ food seems almost tame after reading the others but here goes…I’ve eaten bulls’ and lambs testicles. The former in a Spanish restaurant in NY, the latter at a winery in Chile. And, no, I didn’t seek them out but I was brave enough to try when offered.

  11. Whenever we travel I am always determined to eat the local cuisine. We traveled quite a bit in South America, so in Argentina we had to try the parilla. It included various types of meat, as well as intestines and blood sausage. I tried it all. But, for more exotic food that actually tasted better, we found a restaurant in a rural part of Chile that smoked and served the most delicious wild game. It included wild boar, elk, and several other meats that I can’t quite recall.

  12. I had the ‘unfortunate’ experience of eating sea urchin while on vacation in Hawaii with my mom.
    Many people swear that “it’s great”, “a delicacy”, but let me tell you — it’s not.

    I’ve since likened the experience to when you are sick and have coughed up some disgusting phlegm, but are in a pubic situation, and you have to swallow it back down.
    get the idea?
    Now imagine doing that with a homeless person’s coughed-up phlegm…that’s sea urchin.

  13. Pig intestine. Hands down. Weirdest thing I’ve ever eaten. I ate it at this hole-in-the-wall in Flushing, Queens (which is kind of like the Chinatown of Queens) that was recommended by Anthony Bourdain in his tv show. It tasted kind of like bacon. Really chewy bacon.

  14. I grew up in a very large family and when my mom fried a chicken, she fried the whole thing. I was one of the youngest, so when the platter got around to me, all that usually was left was the neck. So for all my childhood years I can remember eating chicken necks and thinking that it was an actual cut of the chicken. I grew to like it actually, and will never live down the embarrassment of ordering chicken necks the first time I ate at a “real” restaurant.

  15. My hubby has way more exotic tastes than I do. He grilled some hamburgers and we wolfed them all down. Only then did he tell us that they were buffalo burgers! You have to trick me into trying something new….

    The most exotic/strange/disgusting thing he has ever eaten is fried scorpion in China. I have a photo on my family blog of him with the scorpion dangling from his mouth until my family told me to take the photo down ~

    I would love to ‘trick’ him and our family with these kangaroo burgers!

  16. The weirdest, and most disgusting, things I’ve ever eaten were in Japan. For instance, one day I ate (and almost threw up) octopus balls. These little things are octopus cooking in a batter somewhere between a crepe and an omelet. That doesn’t sound too bad, but when you add a really disgusting mayonnaise layered over top, it’s a chewy gag-reflex-inducing mess.

    I also ate a bowl of pork belly and cartilidge (very, very chewy, but a delicacy in Japan) and dried fish jerky, which might be one of the nastiest things on the planet.

  17. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Eastern Europe, I ate nutria (a beaver-size rat-like rodent) on a regular basis, sausage that contained horse meat (once I found out it had horse in it, I wouldn’t touch the stuff), the brain of a duck from my back yard and lastly, I also ate fish from a river where the USSR did a lot of chemical testing, which was pretty adventurous and stupid!

  18. Our family spent several years in Beirut Lebanon when I was younger, which, as you can imagine, has different food sanitary standards than here in the United States. When we’d go buy chicken, my mom would look around, choose the chicken she wanted and then wait while the butcher killed it and plucked it for her. Upon getting home she’d cut off the feet and give them to us to play with. If you pull on the tendon, it’ll curl in the toes. It was fun to chase siblings around with a clawed foot that would open and close at your will.

    However, the most unusual item she ever cooked for us was lamb brain. Cooking it wasn’t as disconcerting as watching the preparation since she had to peel off the membrane that encases the brain. Whatever the method she used, it ended up with the full brain being served at the table, then sliced thin and put our plates. A little spritz of lemon juice and we ate it (we had no choice in the matter). I love lamb, but I hope I never have to eat lamb brain again.

  19. I thought that eating grasshoppers was pretty awful. My boyfriend loves them, so I gave them a try, but I couldn’t handle the little grasshoppers finding their way all over my plate.

    A meal I like that most people don’t like is mixing macaroni & cheese, applesauce, and peas. That’s a great comfort food of mine.

  20. Well, I’m sure I’m not going to win any contests, unless it’s a pity contest.

    I haven’t eaten anything strange. If I won this kangaroo meat, it would be the one and only strange thing I’ve eaten.

    How’s that for sad? Tugging at your heartstrings?

  21. I have eaten a lot of unusual things from armadillo to zinnias and all the letters of the alphabet in between but one of the most memorable things I hope to never eat again are the pancakes that a girlfriend made for me in college. She put too much baking soda in the mix and when I took one bite my mouth foamed and frothed up like I had rabies – most bizarre sensation when all you wanted was a little breakfast….

  24. I am 80 years old and have had a head start on most of you for eating adventurous or weird food. Only thing is I don’t think of any food as weird. Growing up in an Italian family we ate everything and I never questioned it. So I have had Lamb’s Head in Little Italy in NYC as well as blood pudding from Ferrara’s which you could only get once a year, I believe February. Chicken feet is something we fought over, fried brains yum, pigs feet, you have to put them in the gravy. Grilled goat, and pork liver wrapped in caul on the grill for breakfast at our family picnics. Stuffed chicken intestines and stuffed derma compliments of my Jewish friends. Rabbit that my uncle raised for food on Long Island. Tripe in tomato sauce and Suffitro made from beef heart, liver and kidneys, don’t forget the bay leaf. Fish cheeks, tasty morsels and shrimp cerviche. Zucchine flowers that I just ordered from here delish, and I loved all of it and still do. Now the one thing I recently tried was sea urchins and really didn’t care for it altho I love all seafood. Can still eat 5 dozen clams on the half shell. I am working on my bucket list of food to try before I go and I think I am a good candidate for the Kangaroo Burgers. In any case it was fun remembering all the food I have eaten in my day. Thanks.

  25. We do a lot of experimenting in our home. So far, the most exotic thing we’ve prepared was gator tail (recipe on my blog). The most adventurous thing I’ve ever eaten, however, was calf fries! I went to a steakhouse in Amarillo along with a coworker (it was for a funeral, but we opted to grab a bite too!). She insisted I try the calf fries. I’m not about to turn any food down, so this sounded like a great idea. They were tasty – I can’t imagine anyone would know what they truly were, unless they asked.
    I’ve also enjoyed fish sauce, dried scallops and shrimp, and 100-year-old eggs – all without regrets. Sometimes, you find the tastiest foods in things you might not commonly think of as food.

  26. I grew up in a pretty large family(7 kids)and remember living in Romania under the communist regime. Meat was scarce…and rationed. We had to wait in line for hours and we never knew if they would run out of the meat by the time you reached the front of the line. Needless to say, we took and ate what was given to us. We grew up eating everything from our plates. And, I mean EVERYTHING. All of us children knew better, so we never complained….it did help that my mom was an incredible cook:)!
    I remember my mom making chicken soup for us quite often. Chicken was more readily available then. Most of the chickens were sold alive… the butchering and cleaning was left up to you. I remember my mom butchering the chickens in the bathtub of our small apartment. She used all the edible parts of the chicken, including the cockscomb and feet. I loved the pillowy soft texture of the cockscomb as well as the inside “pillow” of the feet. Interestingly enough, we would “fight” over them! Oh, and we loved sucking out the brains from the heads. Yes, that set all of us kids to be adventurous later on in life…eating all sorts of foods. We still eat everything off our plates:).

  27. Probably one of the riskiest foods I’ve ever cooked was cooking for a girl on the third date. Kangaroo tenderloin in a puff pastry “pouch” with a vanilla fig balsamic reduction. Still with her 9 months later.
    Small spoonful of bhut jolokia powder on a dare was stupidest thing that we did in the kitchen. Won’t do that again.
    Common things on our menu were Bison burgers and steaks, venison, octopus, kobe steak, blowfish, kindai tuna, elk, moose, crocodile, searched for koala bear but it’s illegal to import them for cooking.
    By far my favorite though is a canape bone marrow on crustini fith foie gras butter and brasied osso bucco. SEX IN ONE BITE

  28. wow, kangaroo meat – i would have NEVER guessed BUT what a delight this would be in the Poag household. you see, me and my husband are on a quest to find a food that he DOES NOT like. i am 100% positive that he would not only like – but LOVE – kangaroo meat because he enjoys ANY type of meat. we have cooked everytime of fish, shellfish, beef, pork, chicken – you name it, we’ve cooked it.
    the most exotic thing that we’ve eaten [and of course loved] is fish roe. the sight and thought of it does make the stomach turn, but it was actually pretty good.
    when it comes to cooking – our options are somewhat limited unless we order online [because of our area] but we have cooked live lobster, which was a little frightening to hear them scream when placed in water. we ate [and loved] them none the less 🙂

  29. Having shopped at an exotic meats store in Ohio over the holidays years ago with my former in-laws, I’ve had the opportunity to try quite a few unusual things: alligator, ostrich, elk, and even kangaroo. I’m willing to try almost anything at least once. Visiting my parents one recent Summer in Colorado (where they now live), I also enjoyed buffalo jerky. I’m a beef jerky fanatic. *drools*

    The wildest & craziest thing I’ve ever eaten, at least, according to people who find out, is squirrel. Yep, squirrel. Not only did I eat it and enjoyed it, but I actually sat there, as an eight-year old and watched my uncle soak them, skin them and then drop them in boiling water to finish ’em off before we ate them. The sound of the skin being removed is still etched in my mind.

    It sounds like a scary story from the deep South rather than the suburbs of a Virginia town 45 minutes from Washington, DC. Back then, as a Daddy’s girl, I was also known to sit beside my Pop and eat chitlins, pickled pig’s feet and the oh-so-tasty Scrapple. He used to work at a pork slaughterhouse.

    I’m not sure squirrel qualifies as ‘wild & crazy’, but the reaction I get when people find out is always quite amusing.

  30. 10 lbs of Kangaroo buger meat?? I might have to buy a new freezer if I won. 🙂 And I’m thinking a family wide cookout will be in order! Considering I completely stopped eating all meat but chicken and turkey in the early 90’s and just started eating fish within the last 2 years I haven’t tried a lot of unusual foods in my days. My most recent adventurous food was trying a spicy tuna roll earlier this week, http://emilyeatsclean.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/welcome-to-chicago/ If I do win this contest, I VOW to actaully TRY a kangaroo burger and blog about 🙂

  32. What a great giveaway. I have never tried Kangaroo, but have always wanted to. I am always looking for new things to try in my cooking, but some of the more adventurous things are hard to find. I did go to an exotic restaurant in Asia once and tried some very interesting and tasty things. We ate a turtle dish that had some interesting textures and flavors. I wasn’t a big fan of the texture, but was very glad I got the chance to try it. I can’t wait for a chance to try Kangaroo!

  33. When I was a child my parents made a Persian dish, lamb head! Imagine my surprise when coming upstairs for a nice Satirday breakfast and looked in the pot to see the full skull of a lamb! Ugh, not my idea of a good breakfast. I am interested in trying kangaroo burgers! I love buffalo burgers so these might be great!
    Thanks for the chance!

  34. It is all about the armadiillo,.

    I grew up with a dad from the backwoods of Texas. Even though we lived in Los Angeles growing up, he and his friends always brought food from Texas. If he hit a deer on the drive to Texas, it was food that week. He always had my mom cooking coon and possum, and things of that nature. The one thing I remember vividly was the day we had armadillo. I may have gagged at all the other things he brought home, but something about being able to say I had eaten it was too tempting. It wasn’t half bad, but I have never eaten it again.

    For Memorial Day he pulled some old cow tongue from the freezer and threw that on the grill. He recently told us that delicious sausage we loved as children was no longer made because it was found the company used horse meat. I could have gagged.

    Speaking of my dad, this week’s special was pig ears. The man has lived in California for 40 years, yet he manages to have hog parts you do not find in the local grocery store on the stove at all times.

    I love you, Dad.

  35. The more adventure items I’ve eaten: jellyfish, abalone, chicken feet, tripe, fish eyes, crab intestines – the lungs are a little sour, bear, elk, deer…

    The more adventure items I’ve cooked: Ostrich sliders, Ostrich fajitas, Grilled Kangaroo, Maple Salmon Roe…

    If you label it as food, chances are I’ll eat it.

  36. Live Armadillidiidae bugs…AKA the Roly Poly bug. This was when I was much younger but there was something about the crunch that couldn’t keep me away and I would pick them up and snack on one when ever I would find it. Other than that I have eaten almost everything else listed (braised chicken feet and pickled pigs ear are among my favs) but the only thing I wont try again is a Sea Cucumber…just not my style.

  38. I’m sure my list won’t be the most adventurous entry, but I have a few memorable meals!

    My best friend’s dad cooked us some alligator and squirrel one evening. It was a strange combination, for sure, and I’ll never forget it. We were in middle school, so both options grossed us out!

    Living in an area where hunting is a lifestyle, I’ve had access to try a variety of game meats, including some delicious deer sausage. We also have a few buffalo farms here, and it’s my new favorite meat!

    I’d have to say MY most adventurous meal/dish that I’ve made is morels. I had never had them until this spring, and I cannot wait to have them again.

    http://branappetit.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/fried-morels/

  39. I wish I could say that I cooked beef heart. I wish I could say that I prepared a garlic paste to create an anti-vampire dish. I have never eaten or cooked heart in any way shape or form. However, I have eaten blood sausage, and that dish stands out in my mind as the most isgusting and adventurous thing I eat year after year.

    Blood sausage is a delicacy and holiday treat for Puerto Ricans. very Christmas dinner, there is a heaping plate of the black links. Every year I try it, convinced one year that I will love it as much as the rest of my family. I keep trying to no avail. The texture is gritty. The color is horrific. And all I can imagine is eating someone’s guts, which is not something I ever wish to do!

  40. My Adventure for Huckleberries

    Adventurous huh? Well it will have to be a bit of a story then, one that ends right back here on this site.

    When my son approached his high school graduation it became evident that he was heading for an enlistment in the Air Force. As a single mom I knew it would be tough saying goodbye and living without him, so I looked for a way to shake things up, you know, as a distraction, so I would not cry in my tea so to speak.

    After giving thought to moving from our home of 12 years in Idaho, to North Carolina so I could be closer to my sisters, I realized that would merely provide for the same routine in a different state. This simply wouldn’t be enough of a diversion to stop my impending if not planned, empty nest pity party. I then realized, not married and without children, I was free to do anything, so I filled out a mountain of paperwork and joined the Peace Corps.

    Hey, you asked for adventure.

    Okay, let’s at least steer this in the direction of food. Among the foods I knew I’d struggle to leave behind as dues for traveling to a foreign country, were: milk, salmon, huckleberries and chocolate. Luckily the country I went to, Ukraine had tasty milk and chocolate readily available.

    In preparation for my trip, I of course researched anything and everything that I could. I wanted to know about the country where I would live for two years. When I came across the nationally preferred soup, borsch, I knew I was in trouble. Beat soup! I had grown up like most American kids where at one point or another been talked into, or forced, to try a beet. That still provides for a vivid memory of one nasty flavor, and the accompanying grudge one has in realizing the whole episode is mostly intended as funny source of entertainment. Ah, come on, don’t tell me you have never subjected obedient children to questionably palatable food items.

    Also in preparation for my trip I circled the country twice, visiting family and friends. It was a kind of build up to travel and an awesome way to say goodbye to loved ones. When I visited my sister, Pandi, we thought it might be a good idea for me to at least try Borsch before I got to Ukraine. She is an excellent cook, so it seemed like a good idea; download the recipe, shop for the ingredients and prime my taste buds for what would apparently be standard fare for the next two years. We tried our best, we read and converted, we improvised and interpreted but my poor brother in law put it best after we forced him, (an obedient husband), to try it when he exclaimed that our brew tasted like “dirt soup”. At this point I knew ‘I was doomed’.

    Fast forward, and I find myself in Ukraine, at dinners, after dinners and more dinners. This is required by the Slavic culture for honored guests. From the beginning Ukrainian food was difficult at best, but by far the grossest thing I came across was Ukrainian Salo. It seems a bit ironic that most Westerners, crazy about fat diets, consider Salo as equivalent to a dose of cyanide. In fact this product consists of entirely of pure fat. No kidding. Think of bacon, but without any of the pink, and usually my friends, it is raw. So to top it off as an honored guest they save the best for you so you are supposed to plop this hunk of pure, raw fat, in your mouth with a smile, chew it, swallow it and say Mmmm… очень вкусный! (very delicious!).

    But, as with most humans we survived and adapted. With the help of the cross culture classes provide by Peace Corps we learned say “no” graciously, and find ways to stay nourished.

    Two very surprising things happened along the way. One day when I went to the kitchen of my host family and opened the lid to the pot and said spontaneously out loud “Mmmmm…Borsch” I knew I had acclimated into the Ukrainian culture. You see Ukrainians really know how to make borsch. Honest, it is really good and yes, they make it out of beets! But, sorry salo, it’s never going to happen.

    The other surprising thing about my adventure is most of us Americans learned how to eat better. We had to prepare just about everything, fast food was not the norm so we purged the taste for processed food out of our system. Now, back in the states, boxed cereal still tastes like cardboard to this day!

    So now I’m back in the states plus a few years. I live in North Carolina to be close to my sisters and have full access to Milk, chocolate, and salmon thanks to the plentiful year round variety found grocery stores. But still I missed huckleberries, which brings me all the way back to this WEB site and what I had for lunch today.

    It’s 2010, it’s August (huckleberry season), and I have internet. So, I thought, hey, maybe someone can ship huckleberries. Yep, you bet, MarxFoods does, and the FED EX truck just stopped by an hour ago. They were freshly picked, probably at the beginning of this week, and I could smell them as I opened the box. I’ll have to admit I went crazy and ordered 10 pounds. It’s as if after going without them for so many years I started thinking they were an endangered species and would soon be extinct. To end, while my huckleberry covered salmon was cooking I divided my “Idaho Gold” into containers to store or freeze and now, I sit here, empty plate beside me, a half a glass of milk and a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

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