Capsicums and chilis are right in season now and I’m harvesting both. These ones are a banana pepper, and they’re either a very mild, sweet chili or a capsicum with a bit of spiciness, depending on how you look at it. They’re slightly laborious to stuff – the larger more common bell peppers would be easier – but for chili lovers the edge of spiciness is so worth it!
And kangaroo mince stuffing marries so well with that capsicum spiciness. Those of you who have visited before will know my thoughts about kangaroo as the red meat of choice for Australians. Kangaroo mince in particular is lean, healthy, ethical, cheap, and lends itself to recipes where there are enough other flavours going on to distract people who are new to it.
The Recipe:
This recipe makes a dozen of these banana peppers, and three is a good sized serving with vegetables or salad, so it makes a main dish for four for just a couple of dollars.
You need a baking dish with a nice tight fitting lid. I have an ovenproof pyrex casserole dish that is perfect. You could cover with aluminium foil, but I avoid foil – it’s one of those thoughtless trash products that need to be much, much more expensive to reflect their true cost. Aluminium uses a huge amount of energy to produce (and thus contributes a huge amount of carbon). You can argue that in cars this is offset by light weight, and in cans it is offset by recycling, but in foil it is hard to argue that is it worth it for something of such fleeting value. And, I don’t care if there’s no definitive evidence that aluminium and Alzheimers are not just co-incidentally associated, I don’t like it. And, apart from anything else, aluminium reacts with acidic foods to create aluminium salts might be harmless but taint the dish. Yuk.
So, first step, find a good oven dish and turn the oven on to heat up.
In a heavy pan, sauté
- 300 gm kangaroo mince
- 1 large onion diced fine
- several cloves of garlic chopped
When the kanagaroo is browned, add
- 300 gm chopped tomatoes (about 4 good sized tomatoes)
- 2 dessertspoons of currants
- 3 dessertspoons bulghur or couscous
- half a cup of water
Simmer for a few minutes until the water has been absorbed. Turn it off and stir in
- about ¼ cup (packed) of chopped fresh mint
While the stuffing is simmering, prepare the peppers. Chop the tops off and swivel a knife blade around inside them to loosen the seeds. Wash the seeds out under running water (a butter knife is a good implement).
Stuff the peppers full of stuffing. The fat end of a chopstick is a good implement for pushing it down to the tips.
Arrange the stuffed peppers in your baking dish. Pour over ¼ cup of water and cover with sliced tomato. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put the lid on and bake for around 40 minutes in a medium oven, until the peppers are tender.
I served these with braised snake beans and potato.
Mmmmmmm I love banana chillis and hubby and I are big fans of kangaroo which coincidentally is defrosting in the fridge for dinner tonight and tomorrow. Now I know what we are having tomorrow.
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Linda, I have tried to like kanga, I really have. We’ve tried the loin cuts, the mince, and the tribe just finds it too gamey to eat. It’s remarkably good for us, as far as red meat goes, so we might just have to give it another go once everyone’s forgotten the first attempts.. 🙂
We buy Macro Meatskanga from our local supermarket. I don’t know whether it has got better, or we’ve got used to it, or I’ve got better at cooking with it! I know when we first tried it, years ago, we found it too gamey and gave up for years. But now it is our favourite red meat, not just for being good but for tasting good too! Maybe try being a bit sneaky? Start with a recipe that uses mince or diced kanga in a highly spiced dish. I’ve had successful dinner parties with people who’ve never eaten kanga before like this. At least Australian beef and lamb are mostly range fed though, unlike the feedlots of some countries.
We tried your recipe last night and it was delish although I did tinker with it slightly and added 2 tsp of ground cummin to the meat. We didn’t have any large tomatos so I threw in a stack of cherry tomatos and served it up with plain yoghurt and couscous.
On a side not I agree that Macro Meats have gotten better.
Kangaroo is delicious! I had never tried it before, glad I have now. Beef will have a job on it’s hands (hooves?) to get back on the plate.
Linda, thanks, I’ll look out for it. I have a sneaky suspicion the meat we bought was meant for dogfood… 😉
Hi Kaye, my son actually had a really productive mini-garden in pots on the balcony of his flat in Brisbane the whole time he was a student. He reckons having a few herbs, a chili bush, some lettuce and silver beet and cherry tomatoes made all the difference to living on a student budget. I’m glad you’re having fun.
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I am saddened to see this recipe for kangaroo meat. When a female kangaroo is killed her joey in the pouch is either bashed on the bumper bar of the truck, decapitated or stomped on. The joey at foot which is still dependent on its mother for milk and protection is left to starve. A slow and lonely death for an innocent creature after seeing its mother and sibling murdered. Kangaroo meat carries a number of diseases and parasites and is not the healthy meat it is depicted to be. Kangaroos are in decline throughout Australia and scientists predict that within 10 years they may be gone. Australia has the worlds worst record for animal extinction and we have lost more than 40% since white man reached Australia. Think of these facts before you buy kangaroo meat. The largest male kangaroos are shot first which decimates the gene pool and destroys the hirarchy of the mob. Wake up people, this is our national icon. Please treat it with respect.
Hi Anne-Marie, I appreciate that you are vegetarian raw food advocate, and meat recipes are not your thing. But for me, intensively farmed animals are the first in line for needing big changes, and wild hunted animals are last in the list of meats to object to. There are some macropod species that are threatened, but the ones that are hunted are overpopulated. The provision of dams in some outback areas has led to population explosions and they risk starving to death in dry times without culls, and decimating the environment in the process. Populations are monitored, and there is some good, independent science to show that the species being harvested have a population of 25 million or more. (Olsen and Braysher 2001; Olsen and Low 2006; Lindenmayer 2007; Lunney 2010). They are amongst the most abundant large vertebrates on earth. “These commercially harvested species are abundant over a broad area of Queensland and Australia. None of these species is listed as threatened under Queensland or Commonwealth legislation. They are listed as least concern wildlife under the Nature Conservation (Wildlife) Regulation 2006.” 1.
The last bit is right – shooters target large, young males in good condition – as any sensible harvester would – not the much smaller females who, if they have a joey at foot, won’t be in good condition, and quotas mean that they can only hunt a restricted number of animals, so they aren’t going to waste quota on smaller, worse condition meat. There is a National Code of Practice for Humane Shooting of Kangaroos and Wallabies, and while there will always be people who suck at any job they do, there is a lot of monitoring of it. Hunters aren’t cruel and wouldn’t waste work chasing down a joey, and while chopping its head off might sound cruel to someone who doesn’t eat meat, it’s how we deal with chooks and ducks etc at home precisely because it’s fast and not cruel. Kangaroo joeys have a very high mortality rate in the wild – their mothers quite often kick them out and leave them to starve when conditions get tough. They are adapted to our Australian conditions of short unpredictable favourable breeding conditions interspersed with drought. I’ve picked up more than a few abandoned joeys.
And kangaroo meat passes health checks same as beef or lamb – exactly the same. Being macropods, kangaroos share less potential pathogens with humans than cows ( See http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/agriculture/pests-diseases-and-weeds/animal-diseases/zoonoses/zoonoses-animal-diseases-that-may-also-affect-humans), and kangaroo meat is organic. Overuse of antibiotics in farmed meat is one of the issues I am most concerned about because it is breeding multiresistant bacteria.
These were absolutely fabulous! As per another comment I added in some cumin and to make it GF or lower carb I skipped the currents and burghul and added about 80-100g ricotta. I served it as a main for 2.
I was so happy to hear hubby commenting on how good it was! I’ve already written recipe out and added to cook book!
Also there was no gamey taste whatsoever. Thanks for an awesome recipe!