I was with my dad the other day and we passed an emu farm. This led to a discusion concerning the facts that not only had we never eaten them, but wouldn’t know how to process them if we had the chance. So, the question posed to the teeming millions is: how do you cut up an emu? I guess an equivalent bird would be an ostrich, so if anybody’s ever eaten an ostrich, your input would probably help me out.
I’ve eaten emu and ostrich, but never had to cut them up, that was done in the processing. But I’d expect it’d be done the way any large animal carcass is butchered.
We usually enjoy it ground up, it’s a red meat, tastes much closer to beef, not like chicken at all, but very low fat. As a result the few steaks I’ve had of either ostrich or emu were a bit dry. One I had prepared at a restaurant prepared by an accomplished chef, quite tasty, but he used a sauce to keep it moist. Otherwise it makes good burgers, great base for my spaghetti sauce, chowders, and I’ve made a dynamite ostrich meatloaf in the past
Don’t know if that answers your question, but its the best I can do
Okay, you asked for it. Everything you always wanted to know about slaughtering ostriches and emus.
From Canada. Dressing procedures for ratites (ostrich, rhea, emu) Warning–this is not for the tender-hearted. No pictures, but just dry-as-dust bureaucratic prose, which in its own way is even worse.
The New Zealand government inspection guide, which concerns itself mainly with health standards, but which is also a 30-page dry-as-dust government manual concerning the killing of animals, with oddly chilling bureaucratic sentences like, “Restraining, stunning and hoisting actions must not be visible to ostriches waiting to be slaughtered.” (It wants Adobe Acrobat Reader to show.)
It looks to me like there are custom emu processing facilities. Probably the emus you saw were not “processed” by the farmer–he trucks them to a slaughterhouse, the same as any other livestock. If you had to butcher one yourself, I would imagine you’d do it like you’d do a really huge turkey or chicken.
Cuts of emu meat.
http://www.galaxymall.com/virtual/eemumeat/faq.html
http://www.aea-emu.org/cut-cooking.asp
When I went to Australia, the group with which I was traveling dined in Alice Springs at a restaurant that served emu and crocodile (or alligator). I think that the emu tasted “beefy” and plain. I don’t remember that either meat tasted especially gamey. I think that the crocodile was a white meat. We also ate the whole tail of a kangaroo while camping in the Outback. I know that such foods are not standard fare for most Australians, but I’ll try most anything once. When in Rome…
(If you ever go, run like a mofo from a jar of Vegemite. Do not stop running for any reason.)
Thanks for all the info. Especially those links, Duck. They told me everything we were looking for. The Teeming Millions come through again. 
Isn’t this some vegetable spread? What’s so nasty about it?
Uh huh. and Kimchee is just cabbage with spices…
I concur. It is one of the few meats in nature to not “taste like chicken, only gamier.”
[slight hijack]My own observation: WTF? I’ve consumed many types of game, and many kinds (reptile, bird, mammal) tasted like chicken. Why does emu (a bird) more closely resemble beef (an ungulate mammal)?
I was shooting this movie with Tim Roth, and I figured I ought to suck up some. I asked to try his Marmite spread on some toast. He was greatly amused at my facial contortions. And, being the good sport he is, he said, NICE TRY !!
It was beyond vomitatious. Still, different strokes. Me, I can’t get enough of Kim Chee. I have a 1/2 Gallon jar sitting cooled in the garage right now. ( the smell is a bit whiffy for the fridge, and the garage won’t see the high side of 40 degrees till March ).
Cartooniverse
I’ve eaten emu as well, ground up in chili. The most I can say is it certainly was beeflike in texture, but since there was plenty of other stuff in the chili I couldn’t say much about the taste. But I can say I’ve eaten emu. That and buffalo.
Please do. All the more for me. Yummy!!
And since your username reminds me of my sig…
I SAID, “Since your username reminds me of my sig…”
You grind up emu over there? - it’s far too expensive here to use as some kind of substitute for hamburger mince.
Vegemite is a yeast extract, and real Australians don’t eat Marmite.
During my teenage years, it used to be a standard joke to get our American exchange teachers to eat Vegemite - they thought anything brown spread on toast or bread was going to taste like chocolate. The US has been avenged for these slights by inflicting upon us Nutella (barf).
No emu, but I’ve eaten ostrich meat and found it very tasty.
I ate a meat stick with emu in it (along with beef and jalapenos, yumm).
I agree with other posters, that emu is in texture like beef, and is very lean and dark red. I mixed it with lean beef with Swedish meatballs once, and also had it in patty form. But as it is so lean when frying patties you need to add some fat.
Emu - quite tasty.
And now you can find free-roaming emu in Florida, particularly in Lake County and a couple feral ones have been spotted in extreme eastern Orange County.
[Evidently a few ‘emu ranchers’ found that emu ranching was not as profitable as they thought it would be, opened up the gates and let the birds out. My office gets a few calls per year about loose birds, but since they are not native wildlife, most of the rehabilitators around here won’t take them in (most work out of their own homes, and really don’t have the facilities to care for an undersized ostrich with as bad an attitude).]
Mmmmmm. Beefalo. Really yummy.
There used to be a burger booth years ago at the New York State Fair - some guy had a beefalo ranch somewhere in the Adirondacks, and would sell burgers and ground beefalo at the fair. Mmmmmmm.
Um. What’s Nutella?
Nutella is a chocolate/hazelnut flavored spread that is actually quite tasty, IMHO.
I don’t know why the Aussies blame the Yanks for inflicting it on them; my impression was that it comes from Europe originally. As a matter of fact, the Nutella History page at http://www.nutellausa.com states that it was created in the late 1940’s in Italy. So don’t be blaming us for everything there, reprise, or next time we won’t help you out in Gallipoli.
Um…we didn’t in the first place.
Gallipoli = 1915
US Entry into WWI = 1917