Australian farmers are discovering wealthy and flavoursome veins of earnings in the meat of previous sheep and cattle that when would have ended up in pies and burgers. Record meat costs, diners’ evolving style buds and growing world demand for protein have contributed to the means of previous cows and ewes to usher in additional income.
For greater than a decade, Bill Williams has raised Wiltshire Shorthorn sheep on his household farm in Wakool, a small city constructed on saltbush nation close to the Victorian border in NSW’s Riverina area.
Working underneath the model identify Saltbush Billy, Williams often focuses on lamb and hogget (meat from sheep aged between 13 months and two years). However, this season the farmer has tapped into the growing demand for older meat, processing his five-year-old ewes which are now not fertile.
“We used to ship them off to market and get pittance,” he says. “The irony is that the infertile ewes have not had to increase a lamb and all the vitality and dietary output that entails. This means they’re in excellent situation.”
Williams dry ages the ewes for 3 weeks to enhance their texture. “The flavour is deep and intense,” he says, noting how uncommon it’s to course of sheep so previous – most farming fashions are “all about getting on as a lot weight on animals as rapidly as potential”.
Neil Prentice of Moondarra Wagyu can be in the previous meat enterprise. The Gippsland beef farmer and winemaker was a pioneer in the advertising and marketing of over-the-hill wagyu nearly a decade in the past. He named it Furu Ushi, Japanese for “previous cow”.
“We used to kill our previous cows for the dwelling freezer,” he explains. “But it was robust. You wanted actually good enamel to get by a steak.”
Prentice says the secret to getting the most out of the beef from his “previous women” is dry-ageing, which includes hanging the carcass underneath very chilly situations with managed humidity and air stream for a number of weeks.
“During that point naturally occurring enzymes begin to break down the muscle fibres making what may very well be robust meat very, very palatable,” he says.
He now processes 10-year-old breeder cows that may now not fall pregnant and ages them with Victorian meat distributor Gamekeepers. Moondara Furu Ushi is often priced at $120 per kilogram retail.
Prentice additionally sells direct to Tom O’Sullivan from Abacus Restaurant in South Yarra. The chef dry-ages the meat for up to 52 days. “The flavour is wealthy, buttery and intense,” he says.
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