Top 10 Australian Foods That Will Make You Say “WOW"

Thanks to the multicultural development of modern Australia, we have a rich and unique food culture. Anything and everything that you could want to eat is available in Australia, from falafel to tom yum, escargots to tacos, but there are a few true blue Aussie foods around too, and here’s a list of the top 10.

10. Macadamia Nuts

Crunchy buttery macadamia nuts are popular the world over, but did you know that they are native to Australia? In Oz, macadamias are dipped in dark chocolate, added to salads, churned into nut butter and even used for their oil.

Other native foods that didn’t quite make the list but are one-the-less delicious include: kangaroo, barramundi, Warrigal greens, crocodile and finger-limes.

9. Damper

This simple soda bread made using the least ingredients possible – flour, salt, water – and baked on the coals of a campfire, has the ability to recall memories of childhood camping trips, like the Madeleines in Swann’s Way. It goes perfectly with either campside stew or strong billy tea and is quintessentially Australian.

8. Hamburger with beetroot

Australian’s aren’t particularly fussed with beetroot. It’s not like it’s in every dish, or even very many dishes, and it’s not flying off the shelves at supermarkets, but strewth mate, if your burger’s not got beetroot on it (and preferably an egg too), it’s just un-Australian.

7. Fairy bread

Fairy bread. How is it possible that something so simple to make, could contain so much delicious magic. There is something comforting about the never changing recipe for fairy bread; sliced white bread cut into triangles, spread with margarine and then sprinkled with hundreds-and-thousands. Bam! What could be simpler or more satisfying (to my 5-year-old self) than that? Let’s hope fairy bread, and chocolate crackles, remain in the country’s culinary consciousness forever.

6. Pavlovas

The pav was first cooked in the 1920s, in honour of Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova who was touring Australasia. Pavlovas are a popular celebratory treat in Australia. Simple yet satisfying, Pavlovas are just meringue, decorated with whipped cream and fresh seasonal fruit – what’s not to love about that?

5. Anzac biscuits

Anzac Biccies were first made by the women folk of Australia, who sent them to the troops during WWI. Thanks to the perfect recipe, soldiers who were fighting in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) received tins of biscuits, still crunchy despite the long journey. As a side note: it is arguable that the only reason golden syrup is still in production is because of the popularity of Anzac biscuits.

4. Tim Tam

Around 35 million packets of TimTams are sold each year according to Arnott’s. That’s 400 million biscuits. The deliciousness of TimTams cannot be overstated, and quite frankly the numbers speak for themselves - us Aussies love a good biccie – but a brief mention simply has to go to the utterly Aussie Iced VoVo. An over the top combination of coconut, jam, strawberry and biscuit, Iced VoVos are the Dame Edna of biscuits.

3. Sausage sizzle snags

Nothing could be more fair dinkum than the Aussie backyard barbie, except for maybe a barbie complete with the ubiquitous snag snaga. Be it fresh off the Barbie, or from the weekend sausage sizzle outside the Hardware store, nothing beats a slice of white bread wrapped around a snag, and a tong-full of onions all covered in tomato sauce.

2. Meat pies

There’s no denying that meat pies, along with their cousins - sausage rolls - have had somewhat of a renaissance in the past few years. Where once a meat pie was limp pastry wrapped around a warm mix of questionable meat and gravy, nowadays meat pies have flaky buttery pastry, and fancy fillings like; kangaroo, mushroom and thyme, or Thai green curry.

Whether it’s Four’n Twenty or a gourmet variation, meat pies are undoubtedly one of the most popular foods Australian foods.

1. Vegemite

Aussies enjoy Vegemite for breakfast, lunch and tea, or so the jingle goes, and strangely enough – given that Vegemite is a powerfully tasting yeast extract, with the consistency of tar – it’s true. Vegemite is such a staple of our diet that it’s available in squeezable travel tubes, so no one ever has to be without, even on the road.