Ostrich meat, tapa style

To make the most of your ostrich meat, stay away from bottled tapa marinades. Ostrich meat has a wonderful flavor and it would be a pity to drown it in marinade. To bring out the natural flavors of the ostrich meat, I decided it would be best to stick to the basics–sea salt and ground pepper.

Cut the ostrich meat (against the grain) into 1/8-inch slices. Semi-frozen meat is easier to slice. So, partially thaw the ostrich meat then slice it. Place the meat in a bowl and season with sea salt and ground pepper. Work the salt and pepper into the meat with your hands.

Heat about 1/2 cup of vegetable cooking oil in a frying pan. When the cooking oil starts to smoke, start cooking the meat in batches. Cook just enough pieces so that they stay in a single layer. Keep the oil at a very high temperature so that when the meat changes its color, the edges would be lightly browned at the same time. If the slices are thin enough, cooking the ostrich meat should take no more than a minute or so. The thing with ostrich meat is that the longer you cook it, the tougher and drier it gets. So, don’t attempt to fry the meat to a crisp. With the price of ostrich meat, you don’t really want it to go to waste.

As soon as one batch is cooked, drain the meat on paper towels and cook the next batch and so on, and so forth.

Serve your ostrich tapa with fried eggs, sunny side up, and garlic fried rice.

If you happen to cook more than your family can consume in a single meal, just store any leftover ostrich tapa in the fridge in a tightly sealed container. You can make Chinese-style fried rice with bits of ostrich meat the following day. I’ll post the recipe for the fried rice tomorrow.

[tags]ostrich+meat, tapa, tapsilog, Filipino+cooking, Filipino+food, Filipino+recipes, Pinoy+recipes, Pinoy+cooking, food+blog, cooking+blog, Food+and+Drink[/tags]

In the mood for more food?

1. Roast pork and cabbage fried rice
2. Meatballs stroganoff
3. Beef, mushrooms and tofu stir fry
4. Baked mussels with butter and cheese
5. Refrigerator cake
6. Braised chicken
7. Midnight snack: crepes, bananas and guava jelly
8. My daughter’s 14th birthday
9. Butter-fried suman and ripe mangoes
10. Piaya

About Pinoy Cook

• About the author
• Cooking philosophy
• Food photography
• The noche buena section
• Product review policy
• Terms of use
• Privacy policy
• Recipe archive
• Published articles
• Food from all over
• E-mail the author

Readers

 Subscribe in a reader

Asian cooking

• Chicken, tofu and kangkong (water / swamp spinach) with chili garlic sauce
• Pork and vegetables stir fry with pili nuts
• Pork siomai (steamed dumplings), pearl balls and lumpiang shanghai (fried spring rolls)
• Where-is-the-rice fried rice
• Beef, mushrooms and tofu stir fry
• White (Hainanese) chicken
• Tokwa’t isda sa gata (fish and tofu in coconut milk)
• Siomai soup
• Vietnamese spring rolls
• Shawarma

How to cook

• A few kitchen tips
• Tips for cooking Chinese-style fried rice
• Don’t be a kitchen slave
• 1 kilo of fish equals soup and spring rolls
• Making the most out of pritong isda (fried fish)
• Stages in beating egg whites
• How to make crepe-like lumpia (spring roll) wrapper
• The how-to-cook series
• A more flavorful pancit canton (chow mein)
• Herb-infused olive oil

Sidenotes