2021 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards: Chooks at the Rooke wins major award

You would have eaten white-fleshed chooks from the supermarket, but this Victorian farmer wants us to try more “real” chicken.

There’s chicken, then there’s “real” chicken.

Many of us would have eaten white-fleshed supermarket chooks, but farmer Xavier Prime remembers the chicken of yesteryear.

“My uncle describes it as traditional chicken you’d get back in the day,” Prime said.

“The meat is browner and darker and has a great texture to it.”

Prime launched Cororooke egg farm Chooks at the Rooke with fiancee Kimberley Burridge in 2017, but his side hustle of raising and selling cockerel also begun to take flight.

Those chickens have led the Victorian farm to win a major trophy at the 2021 delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards.

Chooks at the Rooke farmer Xavier Prime is one of the Victorian National Winners of the Delicious Produce Awards 2021. Picture: Rob Leeson.

Prime’s pasture-raised cockerel were honoured in the From the Paddock category — one of the four major awards.

Chooks at the Rooke was among only a handful of Victorian producers to have been named a winner at the virtual awards ceremony on Monday night.

Prime’s cockerels can only be found in quality Victorian restaurants, such as Yield at Birregurra, Seddon’s Copper Pot and Geelong’s Igni.

Unlike other farms, Chooks at the Rooke raises cockerel up to 24 weeks and won’t house any more than 1500 chickens per hectare. There are now only 94 chooks per hectare.

A total of 17 trophies were awarded by some of Australia’s most renowned chefs, including Future Food System’s Matt Stone and Jo Barrett, Gimlet’s Andrew McConnell and Alla Wolf-Tasker from The Lake House.

New South Wales’ Tathra Oysters took out the Producer of the Year Award.