Street Food In Australia: 10 Best Delicacies That Are Literally Finger Licking Good!

10 Street Food Delicacies You Ought To Try In Australia

While there are innumerable cuisines to try in Australia, here’s a list of 10 food options that you must try on your next trip. Take a look!

1. Barbecued Snags

Available at almost all the street vendors across the country, Barbecued Snags define Australian food culture. With a variety of meat rolled into a sausage, dipped generously in garlic butter and then barbecued, it is no wonder that this is one of the most loved snacks here!

2. Barramundi

Soft buttery meat with crispy skin, a plate of Barramundi is a perfect piece of fried fish. People often take it up a notch by decorating it as fish steak, but Barramundi can best be enjoyed on the streets of Australia.

3. Pigs in a Blanket

For those of you who are wondering, what is the most popular food in Australia, well, Pigs in a Blanket seems like the right answer! A double dose of delicious meat is what this often-called sausage is like. Give up the bread and load more on the meat!

4. Fish and Chips

Set out to the beach, and the popular Australian food on the shore is the good old Fish and Chips. With the most delicious fresh fish in its waters, this country has to be the best place to eat seafood. Small vendors along the beach offer delicious fish and chips in small portions, perfect for a snack!

5. Meat Pies

Been to Australia and not had the famous Meat Pies? Impossible! Of all the things to eat in Australia, this is one that is permanent on every foodie’s list. This flaky dish is packed with various combinations of meat, available as a snack, or even a fancy meal. Pair it with gravy and mashed potatoes to have a filling meal at one of the gourmet restaurants, or just get a piece at the local vendor!

6. John Dory fillets

A happy resident of the Australian waters, John Dory is a type of fish which is also one of the much-loved Australian snacks. Often served with chips, salad, or even mashed potato, this on the go snack is delicious, especially the ones with a dash of herbed oil!

7. Dagwood dog

Another food to try in Australia is the Dagwood Dog. Meat on a stick, deep-fried to crisp, and topped with tomato sauce, this delicious treat is permanent on the menu at any food market, carnival, and fair.

8. Chiko roll

Part of the Australian culture of food, Chiko Rolls are like spring rolls, with a variety of vegetables and beef as the stuffing. This stuffing often varies from shop to shop! Since it is one of the most easily available snacks, they are the easiest option for a hungry belly.

9. Crab sticks

Unlike its name, Crab Sticks are not made out of crabs. In fact, small pieces of fish are dipped in batter and fried in the shape of crab legs! A fun dish to explore especially for kids, you must try it while here.

10. Hamburger with beetroot

While many outsiders find the addition of a slice of beetroot to a classic hamburger unique, this is what makes the Australian burger special! A crispy beef patty, soft burger buns, veggies, and a slice of beetroot finishing it, it cannot get any better than this!

Fruit-herb stuffing for all seasons!

I have several stuffing-related confessions to unload today:

My first stuffing love was found at a friend’s house, when her mother served us an apple stuffing from a Pepperidge Farm mix that is no longer made, I presume because it’s not 1989. My god, did I nag my mother (who wasn’t terribly keen on packaged foods, meanie) to make it too. Sometimes she’d cave, though never often enough, but it didn’t stop me from growing up thinking that the dreamiest stuffing includes tart apples, celery, lightly caramelized onions and herbs, a dream I was repeatedly denied as a child and yes, I’m requesting a very tiny violin.

I think if you’re limiting your stuffing consumption to a single day in November, you are missing out. When you snip stuffing free of its holiday-specific tethers, it doesn’t take long to realize how welcome it could be speared onto your fork the other 364 days a year, a category it shares with latkes (as awesome at cocktail parties as they are for weekend breakfasts topped with a lacy-edged fried egg, and especially fitting this year), yule logs (for Thanksgiving or just the mega-Yodel of it) and fairy lights, which you should not even pretend aren’t as awesome strung across a yard on a July evening as they are outlining shutters and fire escapes in December. I would eat stuffing every week of the year if everyone would stop looking at me so strangely about it.

I am so insistent that stuffing tastes amazing during the breakfast meal with a loosely cooked egg on top, at lunch, aside a salad, instead of a roll, or dinner on days that are not Thanksgiving, in lieu of a grain or potato, that I went to extensive lengths to develop a recipe called Breakfast Stuffing (but really a Stuffing For All Meals) for The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, something of an herbed and savory but not really eggy breakfast strata, studded with my favorite stuffing flavors. I tested and tested and tested this. We enjoyed and enjoyed and enjoyed it. But, nobody else could get their head around it. Every person I mentioned it to said, “Yeah? Breakfast Stuffing, huh?” in that oh-that-scribble-was-a-dinosaur? voice. I know the oh-that-scribble-was-a-dinosaur voice. So, I pulled it, and it has lived on my computer since, hoping to one day find a home.

It’s been four years. Maybe it’s time?

So, here is my favorite stuffing for all days of the year, but especially next Thursday. It includes all of the apples and celery and onion I was denied as a child, sometimes cornbread too, and sometimes, I even put some breakfast sausage in it, but it’s not a requirement. It’s very easy to make — just torn bread, gently toasted, some chopped stuff lightly sauteed in butter, then baked in a pan and stuffed, uh, places* [clutches pearls]. It reheats well. It’s a flexible recipe, in case you detest one ingredient but can’t live without, say, chestnuts. And if you’ve ever wanted to eat stuffing for breakfast on day that are not the day after Thanksgiving, well, you’re among friends.

Thanksgiving recipes: My favorites are listed here, but if you think I’ve missed something, head to the search box (top left, under the logo) and type in the ingredient — I bet we have something. Unless you’re looking for a whole turkey recipe… um, next year, I promise. [Thanksgiving Recipes]

More Thanksgiving this week: I realized near the end of last week that I had five Thanksgiving dishes left to share with you, and wouldn’t it be fun to post each day this week about one? So, Monday was Green Bean Casserole with Crispy Onions. Today is stuffing. And if all goes well (so many tiny inconvenient things — meetings and tests and tours and a pesky case of laryngitis — are plotting against us this week), but I’m going to persevere. I love these dishes too much to keep them from you any longer.

Apple and Herb Stuffing* for All Seasons

6 cups torn chunks French, sourdough or country loaf, torn into bits (I use 2 7-ounce demi-baguettes)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large Spanish or sweet onion, chopped small
1 large or 2 small stalks celery, diced small
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon table salt, plus more to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
1 large or 2 small firm, tart tart apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and diced small
1/4 cup roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 sage leaves, minced
1/2 to 1 cup cup turkey, chicken or vegetable stock or broth
1 large egg

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Spread bread cubes in single layer on large rimmed baking sheet. Bake until pale golden, stirring occasionally, 10 to 15 minutes. Let cool in pan while you prepare the other ingredients.

Generously butter a 2-quart baking dish (a 9×5-inch loaf, 8- or 9-inch square dish, etc.) with 1 tablespoon butter. Melt remaining 4 tablespoons butter in large skillet over medium heat. Add onion, thyme, salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper and cook for 2 minutes, until becoming translucent. Add celery and cook for 2 more minutes. Add apple and saute until a bit tender, 3 to 4 minutes more.

Place bread in large mixing bowl. Scrape contents of skillet on top. Whisk egg and 1/2 cup broth or stock together and pour over. Stir in parsley and sage. Spoon into prepared pan. If mixture looks a little dry, pour remaining 1/2 cup broth over it. [This is a good place to pause, if needed. Nothing bad comes of the stuffing absorbing the liquids for longer.] Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until brown on top and no liquid appears if you insert a knife vertically into the center of the stuffing pan and turn it slightly. Serve immediately, or reheat as needed.

Smoke-roasted stuffed bell peppers!

After Day One at the wineries and Days Two and Three at the grill, we spent our last day on a barely too brief to mention swing into San Francisco where we wandered the Ferry Market Building and lunched at the Slanted Door with friends before heading up to Berkeley. We had dinner with a gorgeous group of food bloggers that evening at Oliveto in Oakland, and on recommendation from the lovely Shuna, breakfast at Mama’s Royal the next morning. In between these gullet-gutting excursions, we found some time on Monday to wander about the Berkeley campus where we wallowed in nostalgia for our unscheduled college days and once wrinkle-free foreheads (fine, that was just me) before jetting back to the land of late dinners, humidity, and the daily grind.

But really–let’s cut to the chase already, shall we? After raking through my extensive notes from the weekend’s grilling class, it’s even clearer than before what a Grilling 101 it was, chock full of building blocks. The recipes, though, were anything but introductory and I’ve included one of my favorites at the end.

So, with little further ado, five totally nerdy bits of grilling information I learned this weekend:

1. Do you know why gas grills don’t sear as well as charcoal grills? To get a good sear, you need a raging hot fire and a dry surface. Charcoal burns drier than gas. Gas is about 30 percent moisture, releasing 1/2 to 1 cup water every 10 minutes that the grill is on. This water adds steam to the cooking process.

2. There are five ways only to cook with fire: Right in the fire, right near the fire (like toasting a marshmallow), directly over the fire, indirectly, with no heat directly underneath, and an oven set-up, where the walls are heated. [See Figure 1, brought to you by a one-hour delayed flight.] Indirect was totally new to me because I’m obviously not from the South or Southeast, two regions where they would never call throwing burgers and hot dogs on directly over a blazing grill “barbecue.”

3. But there are six grilling techniques: direct, which is what we are the most used to, and is a lot like broiling; indirect, which is great for denser, bigger foods that take a long time to cook; rotisserie, which is great for even-browning and add smoke, which is a great technique for gas grills, which impart no aroma; barbecuing, usually with a pit smoker and an off-set firebox, whereby food cooks for a long time over a very low, highly-flavored heat; and cooking in the coals, in which you ditch the grill grate and do just what it sounds like.

4. When considering grill fuels, it’s good to know the pros and cons of each. Propane grills are the most popular in the U.S., but they have the aforementioned water content issues. Gas grills are also common, connected directly to the gas line of the house. (My parents, EMTs and my father the volunteer fireman would probably like to add that directly connected gas lines can be serious fire hazards.) Charcoal comes in two forms, briquettes and lump charcoal. Of the former, some are made with cheap scrap wood and all sorts of other fillers, not to mention borax as a binder. Lump charcoal is their preference, it has no additives and it burns much hotter. Wood produces some of the most incredible flavors, tastes that vary from wood to wood, however, fresh wood is 50% water, is harder to light and doesn’t burn easily. Seasoned wood actually burns hotter than lump charcoal.

5. Get this: Higher heat doesn’t make something cook faster. Why? Because conduction, one of the three types of heat transfers that occurs in grilling, isn’t very effective, and little can be done to speed up the process, as food isn’t much of a conductor. Raising the temperature just traps more heat, and makes the edges browner. However, convection, or circulated heat that works even better with a lid, creating an oven-like state, is more effective, as is radiation, which is heat that comes off the fire but never directly touches the food, such as the warmth that emanates from the sun. This is the part of a class that sounded the most like science lab because they started talking about the electromagnetic spectrum, thus I did what I always did then–zoned out and doodled. Look! I drew our teachers as grills!

Finally, and no, I am not just telling you this because my weekend was like, a sponsored promotion of this book, if you have any interest at all in cooking outside, you have got to buy Mastering the Grill. It is absolutely loaded (like, 400 pages stuffed) with mind-blowing amounts of building blocks and helpful tidbits, like those above, but ten thousand more.

Usually, when we read about grilling, it’s about barbecuing, or the culture around Southern and Southeastern grilling. But this is about the technique, science, and approaches to cooking with fire, which means that it is endless useful, whether you put peaches, Foccacia, brisket or corn on the grill. The book isn’t about regional sauces or techniques, but how to wield fire to your cooking advantage.

Also? In case the “Terrance and Phillip” doodles don’t give it away, the authors are pretty cute.

One year ago: Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake

Smoke-Roasted Bell Peppers Stuffed With Garden Vegetables
Mastering the Grill by Andrew Schloss and David Joachim

Yes, I know: Where’s the beef? Well, after a weekend of burgers, chicken, sausage, and ribs I’m still in the land of Meat over and even the thought of it makes me groan a little. This, however, is something I can’t wait to make again, a lighter, crunchier and healthier variety of stuffed pepper and pretty as a picture.

Makes 8 small servings

2 medium red bell peppers
3 medium mixed bell peppers (orange, yellow, green)
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
3 tablespoons butter
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 medium yellow squash, cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels (from 3 to 4 ears of corn; for extra flavor, once you’ve cut the kernels off, use the dull side of your knife blade to scrape the remaining corn and juices, or “milk” from the cob)
1 medium tomato, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch dice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs (such as parsley, oregano, basil or a mix)
1/4 cup plain dried breadcrumbs
Oil for coating grill grate
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

If using a gas grill: Use indirect heat on medium (325° to 350°F), a 2- to 4-burner grill-middle burner(s) off, or a 2-burner grill with 1 side off and a clean, oiled grate.

If using a charcoal grill: Indirect heat, medium ash, split charcoal bed (about 2 dozen coals per side) with a clean, oiled grate on medium setting

1. Heat the grill as directed. Soak 2 cups of apple or oak wood chips or chunks in water for one hour.

2. Seed, core and cut one of the red bell peppers into 1/4-inch dice. Cut the remaining bell peppers in half lengthwise right through the stem, leaving a bit of stem attached to each half. Cut out the cores, seeds, and ribs from the interiors of the peppers, leaving the stem intact. Sprinkle the insides of the peppers with 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and 1/4 teaspoon of the pepper.

3. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until almost tender, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic, chopped bell pepper, zucchini and yellow squash. Saute the vegetables until crisp-tender, about 4 minutes. Stir in the corn and tomato and cook until heated through 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in herbs, breadcrumbs, and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Cook and stir until the breadcrumbs soak up most of the liquid in the pan. Remove from the heat and spoon the filling equally into the pepper cavities.

4. When the grill is hot, put the soaked wood chips or chunks over the coal on both sides of the grill. If using gas, put the wood chips in a smoker box or in a perforated foil packet directly over one of the heated burners.

5. Brush the grill grate and coat it with oil. Put the stuffed peppers over the unheated part of the grill, cover, and cook until just tender 20 to 30 minutes. If your grill has a temperature gauge, it should stay around 350ºF.

6. Remove the peppers to a large serving platter. Sprinkle with the Parmesan (if using) and serve.

6 Ways to Protect Your Baby During Cold and Flu Season

Your baby will get a cold at some point. It’s inevitable. Babies’ immune systems are immature, which makes them more susceptible to the more than 200 different viruses that cause the common cold. Plus, your baby—like all babies—loves to touch everything as he explores the world. And pretty much everything he touches winds up in his mouth, which is the best place for icky germs to make their way into his body. 

Don’t worry! You don’t have to give in and just wait for the inevitable to happen. There are steps you can take to help prevent the number of colds your baby will get. And, perhaps most important, there are steps you can take to ensure he never gets the flu.

Follow these six tips for a healthier cold and flu season.

Be on high alert for the first two months. Before your baby has had his first round of immunizations, it’s crucial to have every defense up. The number one thing you can do during this time is to keep the baby away from crowded places like shopping malls and grocery stores.

Keep your baby covered when in public places. If you’re past the two-month point and make a trip to the mall, keep your baby in the stroller with a thin blanket over the opening. Chances are your baby will be snoozing anyway (at least we hope so, for your sake!) and this will prevent strangers from being tempted to take a peek or—worse—a touch!

Always carry disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer. Germs can live up to five hours on things like shopping carts, so make it a habit to wipe things down. If you’re not able to wash your hands, a little hand sanitizer can go a long way.

Enforce a strict “no sick guests allowed” policy. If your mother-in-law is getting over bronchitis and proclaims she won’t touch the baby but just has to see him, stay strong. Sorry, MIL, you need to stay away until you no longer have symptoms. Don’t make exceptions for anyone. If someone has a fever, they need to be fever-free (without using a fever reducer) for at least 24 hours.

Breastfeed if possible. If you’re able to nurse your baby, great! Studies show that babies who are exclusively breastfed for six months are less likely than formula-fed babies to get colds and ear and throat infections. It’s pretty amazing, actually. The antibodies from your body are transported through your breast milk, which gives your little one an extra line of defense. If you are unable to breastfeed, don’t be hard on yourself. There are other things you can do on this list to protect your baby.

Get your shots. Babies can’t get the flu vaccine until they’re six months old, which is why moms and moms-to-be are urged to get vaccines for flu and pertussis (whooping cough). Getting the flu shot when you're pregnant passes antibodies on to your baby that should last him for about six months. The flu can be deadly in newborns, making any side effects you may experience from the vaccination (low-grade fever, nausea) minor in comparison. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that expectant moms also get vaccinated against whooping cough between 27 and 36 weeks so they don’t pass the disease to their unvaccinated newborn. It’s also highly recommended that anyone who comes into regular contact with the baby receive these vaccines.