For over 75 years, West Australians have trusted Dardanup Butchering Company to provide them with only the best of the south west. Back in 1950 that was as a door-to-door service selling fresh meat in the Dardanup region. Now, as Western Australia’s largest multi-species abattoir with a supply chain stretching from farm to fork, the reach is from retail customers to wholesale and food service. They all ask for Dardanup.
Chefs in the state’s best pubs, hotels and restaurants are drawn to Dardanup beef, lamb and pork by expert service and high-quality products like Pitch Black Angus, Valley Spring Lamb and Timber Hill Pork. “I really value the relationship with Dardanup,” says Jules Schliesser, Head Chef at Boundary Island Brewery in Mandurah. “I know that I can always give my rep a call, and he’s there, always happy to help whenever we think about creating new dishes, new menus, always on board with a great bunch of information and working with us on getting the specs right.”
Boundary Island Brewery is known for its steak and barbecue offering, so getting their cuts and sizing right is paramount to Jules. A large Texas barbecue smoker is lit three to four times a week, and on the weekends, they serve smoked meat boards that change on a weekly basis. “Depending on what we’re putting on those meat boards, there’s a fair bit of Dardanup produce,” she says.
With both volume and customer expectation being high, specifying weight amongst other things is important. “We only use point end briskets and there’s a size, weight and how we would like our brisket to be marbled,” says Jules. “We go through a lot of brisket; we’ve had weeks where we smashed through 300kg. They make it work for us, which is awesome,” she says.
Other than brisket, Jules says that she doesn’t want stock standard when it comes to steak. Whereas the norm might be a 300g ribeye, she wants 500g, and a Tomahawk that is 1.2kg or 1.5kg, because she wants a point of difference to other venues. Friday steak night utilises the smoker with the Tomahawks getting a dry rub for over 12 hours and then a reverse smoke, meaning it goes on the smoker for about an hour and a half at a cold end, infusing the Tomahawk with cold smoke and enhancing the flavour. It slowly renders its own fat before it goes onto the grill and is seared off to order. “That’s quite a unique technique over here,” says Jules. “No one in the area does anything like that. If you’re using a smaller cut, then all of this will be a lot quicker. But I don’t want the cooking procedure to be too quick because I need the hour and a half to really bring out the flavour in the meat on the smoker. If it were a lot bigger it would take us a lot longer to do, so that’s where our specs come in, perfect for the flavour that we want.”
Dardanup doesn’t just offer quality. “The competition usually offers a good quality to start with, and then it drops off,” says Jules. Consistency maintains the relationship, as does an element that is at the core of Dardanup’s history and reputation. It’s continued presence in the south west supporting generations of farmers. “We always try and get as local as possible and as fresh as possible,” says Jules. “We don’t try and get stuff from over east or imported, we really value where we get our produce from and we reflect that in our whole philosophy.”