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Cost of Lamb


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I am really interested in this because I have just started keeping sheep. (I am not new to farming and livestock, though, just sheep.)

My sheep do not need to pay for themselves, but I can see that in not too long a time, I am going to be oversupplied with (neutered) ram lambs.

How do I get the average foodie interested in taking some of these things off my hands?

Give them your address... :biggrin:

"It's better to burn out than to fade away"-Neil Young

"I think I hear a dingo eating your baby"-Bart Simpson

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I hear everyone's pain in not being able to get local lamb, and the generally high cost of lamb.

I live only a couple of hours drive from one of the prime lamb ranching areas in the Northwest, Ellensburg, Washington, home to Ellensburg Lamb. Unfortunately, we rarely if ever see Ellensburg lamb in our markets or even at the many farmer's markets here in Eastern Washington.

Part of the reason our local lamb in Montana and Washington is rarely found in local markets is because the lambs raised for meat, (not wool), are raised for the restaurant and food service trade. Lots of our restaurants serve local lamb, yet we can't find it in our markets.

I agree with those who have said it is a matter of supply and demand and the economics of farming lamb. I've read studies where the American taste for lamb is far below the average per person consumption of lamb in other countries. As such, I imagine that it is cheaper for the ranchers and processors to sell large numbers of lambs for the food industry rather than sell a few lambs to local markets.

I regularly buy fresh Aussie lamb at Costco. They always have racks, chops and boneless leg roasts. I find the quality very good. My biggest issue with Australian or New Zealand lamb is that the racks seem to be very small compared to a big fatty American rack of lamb.

Lamb is my favorite meat hands down. I love the sweet flavor and juicy tenderness that comes from the chops of a rack of lamb.

I did not come to appreciate lamb for many, many years.

My Grandfather was part of the lamb industry in Twin Falls, Idaho. Idaho was once the land of lamb with vast expanses of the plains in Southern Idaho crowded with herds of lamb. Grandpa sold lamb pelts, not just wool, the whole damn hide (pelt) with the wool still attached. I'll never forget that musty, hot smell of fresh lamb pelts stacked in the warehouse in Summer-it was really off-putting.

One of my Grandfather's lady friends once cooked a leg of mutton for our lunch. Good God, imagine an old ram stewed in tomato sauce for hours. It smelled worse than the pelts in the warehouse and tasted very, very bad. That's why it wasn't until I got into my late 30's that I appreciated the flavor of Spring lamb.

I think my favorite meal is rack of lamb with any type of potatoes and a nice huckleberry compote that I make in the late Summer.

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I hear everyone's pain in not being able to get local lamb, and the generally high cost of lamb. 

I live only a couple of hours drive from one of the prime lamb ranching areas in the Northwest, Ellensburg, Washington, home to Ellensburg Lamb.  Unfortunately, we rarely if ever see Ellensburg lamb in our markets or even at the many farmer's markets here in Eastern Washington.

Part of the reason our local lamb in Montana and Washington is rarely found in local markets is because the lambs raised for meat, (not wool), are raised for the restaurant and food service trade.  Lots of our restaurants serve local lamb, yet we can't find it in our markets. 

I agree with those who have said it is a matter of supply and demand and the economics of farming lamb.  I've read studies where the American taste for lamb is far below the average per person consumption of lamb in other countries.  As such, I imagine that it is cheaper for the ranchers and processors to sell large numbers of lambs for the food industry rather than sell a few lambs to local markets.

I regularly buy fresh Aussie lamb at Costco.  They always have racks, chops and boneless leg roasts.  I find the quality very good.  My biggest issue with Australian or New Zealand lamb is that the racks seem to be very small compared to a big fatty American rack of lamb. 

Lamb is my favorite meat hands down. I love the sweet flavor and juicy tenderness that comes from the chops of a rack of lamb.

I did not come to appreciate lamb for many, many years.

My Grandfather was part of the lamb industry in Twin Falls, Idaho.  Idaho was once the land of lamb with vast expanses of the plains in Southern Idaho crowded with herds of lamb.  Grandpa sold lamb pelts, not just wool, the whole damn hide (pelt) with the wool still attached.  I'll never forget that musty, hot smell of fresh lamb pelts stacked in the warehouse in Summer-it was really off-putting.

One of my Grandfather's lady friends once cooked a leg of mutton for our lunch.  Good God, imagine an old ram stewed in tomato sauce for hours.  It smelled worse than the pelts in the warehouse and tasted very, very bad.  That's why it wasn't until I got into my late 30's that I appreciated the flavor of Spring lamb.

I think my favorite meal is rack of lamb with any type of potatoes and a nice huckleberry compote that I make in the late Summer.

It's funny you mention this. I live in an area of upstate New York that has many local family farms and orchards. With the exception of those farms' stands, we can't find their produce. It is all shipped to the city, while the local supermarkets get their produce from California. I've even seen Washington apples on display. The number of apple trees in my town alone is beyond counting. Why in the world is Stop and Shop buying apples from 3000 miles away?

For us, it's not a big deal, since we supplement our own vegetables with those from the farm stands. But, the point still remains...

Lamb with huckleberry compote. I like the sound of that..

"It's better to burn out than to fade away"-Neil Young

"I think I hear a dingo eating your baby"-Bart Simpson

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Here is the recipe for the Huckleberry Compote. It goes well with lamb because like lamb, it is a bit sweet. Yet the berries are tart enough to cut through the richness of lamb. And the exotic fragrance of the berries also is a nice accent to the sweet smell of lamb. You could substitute blackberries for the huckleberries and I think it would be just as good.

Just close your eyes and imagine some lambs out in the pasture feasting on wild blackberries. A pretty photo I am sure, but a scene that makes me want to take one of the buggers into the kitchen and cook him!

Huckleberry Compote

¼ cup red wine

1 tbsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

¾ cup sugar

1 ½ cups huckleberries

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

1/8 tsp. cinnamon

Place all the ingredients in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until the mixture starts to gently boil. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook the compote until it thickens, about 40 minutes.

The compote is best if you let it cool in a covered container in the refrigerator overnight and let it thicken further. Heat the chilled compote over low heat before serving it with lamb.

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Are those purple or red huckleberries?  I'm assuming purple.  Do they grow in Spokane?

I lived in Ellensburg for five years and never had lamb there.  Hmmm.

They are wild purple huckleberries and they grow in the mountains just outside Spokane. You only have to drive about 30 minutes out of town to start to get into the huckleberry bushes.

The Lamb company in Ellensburg labels its products as 'Superior Farms' and is right alongside the I-90 freeway just West of town. I checked out their website and they say they sell to retail, but I rarely see it in Spokane.

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One of the most reasonable ways to buy lamb is to buy whole animals and butcher them yourself (you will need to invest in a bone saw if you want loin chops--but not a very expensive tool, unless you get fancy and buy an electric band saw). I get organically-raised lambs for $2 a pound live weight (I'm a careful butcher and get about 90 pounds of useable meat out of a 150 pound animal). Of course you can always have the lamb butchered to your specifications and wrapped for freezer meat for a nominal charge. If you don't want organic, it's even cheaper to buy a whole lamb from a packing house or ethnic butcher (one down the street from us has them for $1.39 a pound).

Then I just vacuum-seal and freeze the cuts (and bags of scraps for making sausage). The one thing to be careful about with lamb (as with goat, venison, and a number of other meats) is to trim off as much fat as possible before freezing. Lamb fat goes rancid very quickly, even in the freezer. So use any fatty cuts like the ribs within a couple months.

So as to the previous comments about lamb fat--I too love it when it's fresh! But old fat is probably the reason for the difference in taste between the one poster's two batches of ground. If you want to make merguez or other lamb sausage/patties/etc. from lamb, I highly recommend adding pork fat, unless the meat is very, very fresh (and you don't plan on freezing extra product).

And as for the higher cost of lamb, compared to other meats: Well, any baby animal costs more. Lamb is to mutton as veal is to beef as baby goat is to old goat as suckling pig is to regular pork. In a baby animal the ratio of pounds of yield as compared to amount of labor caring for the animal results in the higher price.

And finally, every single person I've fed lamb to (or for that matter, goat, which I like even better than lamb) has loved it. Even those who attested to a hate of lamb. It just needs to be cooked properly and be fresh! Case in point, at our 4th of July bbq this year we roasted a whole goat and a whole pig (for 120 people). Guess what was completely eaten and guess what we had leftovers of? The goat was gone within an hour, and I ended up freezing some of the leftover pig! (Granted the pig was twice the size of the goat.)

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If you want to know why there isnt any lamb...although I can get it just fine in the supermarkets in North Jersey...take a month and read Centennial. America is/was cattle country, 100 years ago you could and most likely did get shot for bringing sheep to Colorado, Wyoming or Nebraska. There is even an anecdote in the book about a new preacher giving an extensive serman based on the shepards and lamb of Gd etc...he was asked to leave town, after his steak dinner.

Not that you can get it easily but Icelandic lamb is the stuff of culinary dreams, the nightmare is the $60 FedEx bill

tracey

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The lamb that I could get in America is significantly less flavourful than lamb I've had anywhere else in the world. Americans seem to like their meat mild and less gamy than most other places and the market has reacted towards that. Even the lamb imported from NZ is much milder than actual NZ lamb in NZ.

PS: I am a guy.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I too find it depressing to see the high cost of lamb. It isn't so much the high cost of a rack of lamb though as it is the cheaper cuts such as shanks as has been mentioned here. Not to mention sweetbreads. I know this thread is on lamb but the same thing holds just as true for what use to be inexpensive cuts of other meat such as tongue for exmaple. Since lamb though is my most favorite meat it is all the more disheartening.

While lamb has always taken a back seat to beef and other meats in the states, as I ponder the cost factor (as well as limited availablity) I wonder just how big an influence it is that our local (even large and good sized speciatly stores) don't really have a butcher any more. All of the supermarkets use to have a butcher shop and now none or virtually none of them do. Even the speciatly butcher shops don't get as much of the animal as they use to. Obviously not having a true butcher shop must be cost effective for the supermarkets. While it is cost effective for them, I wonder just how much that has added to our cost, especially when it comes to the lesser cuts which the stores use to sell for a very good price in order to move them.

Charles a food and wine addict - "Just as magic can be black or white, so can addictions be good, bad or neither. As long as a habit enslaves it makes the grade, it need not be sinful as well." - Victor Mollo

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.... Obviously not having a true butcher shop must be cost effective for the supermarkets.  While it is cost effective for them, I wonder just how much that has added to our cost, especially when it comes to the lesser cuts which the stores use to sell for a very good price in order to move them.

You raise a very good point. Are there any experts out there who have knowledge of how store policies are developed who can enlighten us on this?

Like CtznCane, I miss the lesser cuts and their prices.

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