This week Debra Mckenzie who looks after the restaurant marketing for Deep Blue Bistro in Sydney sent me a fantastic photo of a crocodile dish that chef Thomas Heinrich recently created. His dish of North Queensland crocodile carpaccio with lemon myrtle oil, caperberries and bush tomato confit features on their Outback Degustation Menu.

Many would look at the photo of Thomas’s crocodile dish and think it was a nice carpaccio of Barramundi, Murray cod or event DhuFish. This started me thinking, why aren’t there more restaurants in Australia which serve crocodile?

Compared to other meats and if well trimmed, crocodile is low in fat, low in calories and high in protein. Trimmed Crocodile can be low in saturated fats and high in monounsaturated fat and is considered a good source of niacin and vitamin B12. The reason trimming is essential is that reptiles are exceptional metabolic converters. An adult croc can survive on as little as a chicken a week but it will not produce any wastes, digesting the bones, beak, claws and feathers totally. Feed a croc too much chicken and it will deposit a yellow fat (none too healthy for us to eat and probably not too good for the croc either) along its muscle fibres. However, it is easy to trim off this fat store leaving the trimmed white meat to use.

Crocodile meat is commonly available frozen to ensure quality and food safety and the most popular cut is the tail although croc legs make a great substitute for chicken drumsticks and drummettes. There’s also something primordial in holding a croc leg as you eat the flesh from the bones. However, the real challenge for chefs is to add flavour to an otherwise light flavoured meat as well as how to handle it so as not to toughen the meat during cooking. The use of marinades (eg. kiwifruit purée, pawpaw or mango skin) to break down the muscle fibres enzymatically, long slow cooking or perhaps the easiest, serve it as rare as possible.

Crocodile meat is extremely versatile and can be fried, grilled, BBQ or stewed. The golden rule with crocodile is that it should be cooked very slowly over low heat otherwise cooking quickly causes it to toughen. Crocodile is ideally suited to the flavours of Australia, some ideas include Salt and Alpine Pepper crocodile, lemon aspen marinated north queensland crocodile and Wattleseed poached crocodile.

Japanese visitors to Australia have for years enjoyed the delicate flavour of crocodile, which is why many restaurants in and around Cairns serve crocodile. Its probably also why during World Expo in Nagoya last year, the Australian Pavilion served over 100,000 crocodile rolls (known to the Japanese as Wani Rolls) during the 6 month event. Australia’s crocodile roll was regarded as the most popular take away item at World Expo in Japan.