Meat Mail readers will probably be aware that your mates at True Aussie beef and lamb spend a good deal of our efforts in educating chefs and culinary R&D professionals about meats from Australia. One of the groups we work with is the International Corporate Chefs Association, or ICCA. The ICCA brings together some of the industry's top R&D and corporate/executive chefs from high-volume restaurant chains across the country. This year we supported their conference in the up-and-coming culinary hotspot of Portland, Maine where the latest food industry trends from the region were uncovered in field trips and in demonstrations throughout the conference.
During the proceedings, we showcased just what a high-quality grassfed beef product tastes like with a tasting flight of different cuts from 100% grassfed, no antibiotics, no added hormones Australian beef. We kept the preparation to a salt-and-pepper minimum and grilled the rib-eye, tri-tip and bottom sirloin flap to medium-rare. The chefs got a real taste of the fresh Australian grassfed beef flavors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the rib-eye was voted most delicious but with all cuts 'selling out' we know the other grassfed cuts also “went down a treat” as we like to say.
Aussie lamb also made quite the splash from morning to night at ICCA, starting with our lamb breakfast sausage sandwich-modeled after typical roadside American offering with American cheese, English muffin and eggs, but taken to another level with the boldly spiced housemade lamb sausage patty. And as the day progressed, our Aussie lambstrami Rueben sandwich on marbled rye with emmenthaler cheese and sauerkraut, and the lamb gyros straight off of the autodöner were a hit with the chefs as well. All of the lamb dishes were created with value cuts like shoulder and leg, showing that lower food cost and delicious results go hand in hand.
