Lamb lovers survey

[Swisskaese]

I adore lamb. Unfortunately, it is very expensive here, but I found a great butcher in the town I just moved to north of Tel Aviv. Their prices are much better than in Tel Aviv.

I love all cuts of lamb, but since moving to Israel I have enjoyed eating:

Lamb kebabs with herbs and pine nuts

Dates stuffed with lamb

Butternut squash stuffed with lamb

Lamb and pumpkin stew

Lamb kubbeh

......

Edited October 17, 2005 by Swisskaese (log)

[Smithy]

I'd think lamb would be one of the better suited meat animals to raise in Israel - better than beef, for instance. Is beef even more expensive? If not, why is lamb so expensive?

Sorry for all the question marks. You'd think I'd just bought a bunch on sale, wouldn't you?

[SobaAddict70]

I absolutely adore lamb.

As for the nay-sayers, how do they know they'll hate it if they've never eaten it? I've never been able to figure that one out.

[Pam R]

Love it.

Kosher lamb was almost non-existant where I live. My whole family loves it and after a 6 week vacation in Australia, we started bringing it in to sell in our store. We sell quite a bit, but really, we just bring it in so that we can have it when we want it.

eta: I just pulled out a pound of ground lamb to stuff a butternut squash with tomorrow night - thanks Michelle!

Edited October 17, 2005 by Pam R (log)

[JSD]

Love it! Love it! Love it!

I grew up eating it because my mother's from here: Lambtown USA

When I see it on a menu I always order it.

My husband works with a guy who's from the middle of nowhere (a rural Nevada cattle ranch) and if I eat lamb near him, he looks like he's going to faint.

I love lamb with lots of garlic.

[ellencho]

Have you tried marinades?  I don't mean the kind that mask the flavor ("It's great! You can't taste the meat at all!  ) but the kind that can draw out the gaminess.  My favorite is a nearly all-purpose marinade of oil, lemon juice, chopped onions, parsley, garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, probably a few other things I'm forgetting. Meat marinaded in that and then grilled as in kabobs, or skillet-fried and worked into a pilaf, never tastes gamey to me.  (I can post the recipe if it sounds appealing to you.)  It seems a shame to cook something you won't eat yourself, if there might be treatments you'd like.

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I would really love it if you'd post the recipe. If I can get my paws on some pretty chops I'd definitely be open to trying it.

[Jason Perlow]

DEFINITELY a "love" here. Especially in any Greek or Turkish preparation. Or Chinese or Indian even.

[Bill Miller]

I had thick medium rare lamb chops at Canlis in Seattle on Thursday nite. Perfectly cooked, with a bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir, served with a wild mushroom sauce. I was full of Halibut and needed a change. You all eat your hearts out--best I've ever had.

[tsquare]

Love it.

Remembering a Mongolian lamb dish - marinaded cubes in a thick spicy marinade, skewered and broiled.

Or the leg of lamb that was the main course last winter, welcoming my sweetie back into my life.

But even friends who used to say "ewww" to lamb have grown up and can demolish roasts and chops by the poundful.

[tsquare]

I had thick medium rare lamb chops at Canlis in Seattle on Thursday nite.  Perfectly cooked, with a bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir, served with a wild mushroom sauce.  I was full of Halibut and needed a change.  You all eat your hearts out--best I've ever had.

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How come the out of towners get to go here and I still haven't been?

[irodguy]

Love Lamb and if the weather would ever get cooler here in Texas it would be Osco bucco season. With the price of Lamb Shank being very reasonable by the case from Sams it always great to knock out a few shanks.

[Country Cook]

I love lamb when I can get it local and fresh (and I usually freeze a bit then). The NZ is okay for a fix of season though.

[CtznCane]

I love beef. Absolutely and no two ways about it, but lamb? Lamb, to me, is the ultimate red meat. If I love beef, I absolutely adore lamb. That said, why are there so many who don't?

When we first got together my wife would have nothing to do with lamb. As with many this came from growing up with mutton. Not just gamey but overly strong and not cooked very well to boot. The dish that got my wife turned around is Lamb shanks. Then Lamb stew which she is really fond of now (the recipe I use here is Julia Childs from her 'The French Chef Cookbook' tv show.) On occasion I can get her to eat loin chops as well. The only resistance I now have is mainly to leg of lamb though I keep trying periodically with that one as well. I think in the near future, for the first time in a long while I"ll make my favorite lamb dish, which is an eye of a rack of lamb cooked in puff pastry.

The biggest difference, on the whole, I think is that if you screw up a beef dish it is still edible. I mean, short of burning it, beef will still be palatable (to some degree) but if you screw up a lamb dish, then yes it is more noticeable that it didn't turn out okay.

[tighe]

With my dad in the sheepskin business, I ate a lot of lamb growing up. I never realized how little most people ate until I was in college. I read that annual per capita lamb consumption in the US is only 2 pounds, meaning that I'm eating 20 or 30 people's share each year.

Lamb ribs are the most underappreciated cut of meat in the world, when prepared well, there is nothing I'd rather eat.

I grew up eating it because my mother's from here:    Lambtown USA

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Funny, my dad was part owner of Superior Farms in Dixon. I spent a fair amount of time there even though we lived in Seattle.

For those who are interested, my dad's marinade recipe:

2 parts soy sauce

2 parts pineapple juice

1 part dry vermouth

Lots of chopped or crushed garlic

Marinate overnight

Edited October 17, 2005 by tighe (log)

[moira27]

I have to agree with the comment that lamb tastes like wool sweaters. I cannot not agree that it would be "old" lamb either.

When I was eight or nine my Dad decided to change from raising beef to raising lamb. This meant there was a lot of lamb prepared in our house, and it was young (6-8 months) and eating both fresh and frozen. It was grass fed with the ocassional scoop of oats.

I could NOT stand the taste and still think it taste's like wet wool. It had nothing to do with the cuteness factor. I thought the calves were cute and still devoured fresh liver and whatever beef my mom cooked. Baby chicks were adorable and my mother did a beautiful roast chicken.

I wonder if there is some taste gene I just don't have. My mother could never trick me into eating lamb> I would have potatoes and vegetables only on those nights. Everyone else was digging in with abandon. I just didn't get it. Years later my mom told me that my GG wouldn't eat lamb either. She told everyone she could taste the BAA off it. See, maybe it is genetic??

My poor husband can only eat lamb at a restaurant because he knows I won't cook it.

Edited October 18, 2005 by moira27 (log)

[purplewiz]

I love lamb. My mother used to make a lamb curry once in awhile, or roast a leg of lamb. It was even good with that mint jelly . The best preparation I've ever had was a leg that was roasted on a rotisserie - I know they had garlic slices in it, what all else they did I don't know, but it was heavenly.

I hardly ever cook it simply because of economics - it's hideously expensive here compared to pork, chicken, and beef. I think the last time I priced it it even blew bison out of the water. I wish I'd written down the numbers, because at the time of the last price check I asked an Australian friend to check what it was going for in his local market, and if I remember correctly, he was paying about half what we were per pound. (We had a lot of fun converting AUD and kilos to USD and pounds ).

Marcia.

[Ling]

I love lamb, and I did even when I was a kid. Then again, I was one of those weird kids who cheered when liver was on the menu for dinner.

My favourite cuts of lamb are shoulder, cheek, and shank. I think slow-braised lamb is one of the tastiest things on earth.

I've (un?)fortunately never had mint jelly with lamb. One of my favourite ways to eat lamb is when my mom braises the shoulder with a bunch of spices, shreds it, then sticks it in the fridge with a layer of lamb fat on top. (Kind of like a Chinese lamb confit of sorts?) Then you can just slice it and serve it cold as a side dish at dinner.

[srhcb]

My late Cousin Kenny's secret for grilled leg of lamb was a marinade containing pine needles.

Legend has it that Kenny discovered this trick one summer when, having started drinking a bit early in the afternoon, he dropped a leg of lamb off the edge of the patio into the woods. Not wishing to disturb any of the gathered relatives, and certainly not wanting to explain the accident to Aunt Bev, he simply gathered up the meat, replaced it on the grill with only a cursory brush off, and resumed grillin' and chillin'.

Later, when everyone had remarked on the excellent leg of lamb, he pretended the pine needles had been an intentional addition.

For what it's worth, Cousin Kenny died at a fairly young age due in no small part to his love of good food and drink.

SB (balsam needles are prefered)

[Jennifer Brizzi]

I'm so pleased to see so many responses to my survey and so many people as crazy for lamb as I am. I thought we lamb-loony types were the minority, but now it seems that on eGullet anyway the lamb disdainers are vastly overruled.

I'm so glad I inspired so many people to cook some soon, too, but after a week of recipe testing and eating demo swapout leftovers I think I'll wait a week or so to cook some myself. And thanks to you I'll have lots of ideas for tasty new ways to do it.

Here's my column and blog entry on lamb.

[ladyyoung98]

I only like the osso bucco and rack of rib cuts. Chops tend be too tough. Are there any other cuts worth noting?

I don't mind the lamb-y taste, but I buy supermarket lamb so it's probably not too gamey to begin with.

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wow you must be eating at the wrong places if you think the lamb chops are tough.

we have a fairly new restaurant here in denton called master grill. it is a brazilian steakhouse. and they have some wonderful succelent and tasty lamb chops that when i tried them, i could not get enough of them. i thought id died and gone to lamb chop heaven.

if anyone out there ever gets a chance to get up this way, i highly reccomend the place.master grill, its on loop 288 in the shopping center across from walmart next to the sporting goods store.

my fiance took me there for my birthday a few weks ago. it was atuesday night and they had a harpist there. i was informed by the waiter that the harpest is there on certain nights of the week whereas the rest of the time they have a live band. the salad bar there was out of this world.

and the inside is decorated to be something liek a rain forest. beautiful place. great food.

and if you go, by all mean try the roasted pineapple. its roasted with a cinnamon sugar blend.

almost all meats come on skewers that waiters bring around to your table, and cut off slices of meat for you, whatever you want. they have it all

lamb , pork, chicken, beef.

the deserts looked like they would hav been worth taking the extra dibaetic drugs for, but between the salad bar and the meats, we had no room. i can not say enough about this place.

and per the thread, i think its safe to say i love lamb!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[touaregsand]

Have you tried marinades?  I don't mean the kind that mask the flavor ("It's great! You can't taste the meat at all!  ) but the kind that can draw out the gaminess.  My favorite is a nearly all-purpose marinade of oil, lemon juice, chopped onions, parsley, garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, probably a few other things I'm forgetting. Meat marinaded in that and then grilled as in kabobs, or skillet-fried and worked into a pilaf, never tastes gamey to me.  (I can post the recipe if it sounds appealing to you.)  It seems a shame to cook something you won't eat yourself, if there might be treatments you'd like.

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I would really love it if you'd post the recipe. If I can get my paws on some pretty chops I'd definitely be open to trying it.

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Farid did a garlicky and lemony marinade for kebabs and my nephews and nieces ate it up like crazy. It was typical American supermarket lamb. Everyone liked it in my family and they are not normally lamb eaters AT ALL.

[mizducky]

I absolutely adore lamb. Its tendency to gaminess is, to me, a feature rather than a bug (heh, old software industry insider joke). The only reason I don't have it more often is relative expense and relative scarcity--as I discovered to my chagrin some months ago when we were doing the Indian curry cookoff, the variety and quantity of lamb available in supermarkets has shrunk to almost nothing, and at ridiculous prices. However, I recently discoverd that the local Food 4 Less carries lamb shoulder neck slices on a regular basis, and at excellent prices, and that this cut really lends itself to braised/pressure-cooked stews, so I expect to be indulging in the stuff on a more regular basis.

Speaking of which, one of my best friends back in Seattle is a dedicated vegetarian (personal beliefs about health), but she would make exceptions to her veg diet for a very few occasions every year. One was to eat Thanksgiving turkey, especially if I was the one roasting it. The others were when the two big Greek Orthodox churches in town would have their respective saint's-day festivals, when she would belly on up to get a roast lamb dinner. It would throw her system out of whack for a couple days afterward, but she'd count the discombobulation worth it in order to enjoy lamb expertly cooked by a bunch of Greek grandmothers.

[Pan]

I like lamb. In fact, I specifically ordered a lamb and tofu skin in casserole dish at Congee Village tonight because I thought it would be good. It was soothing and pleasant, and there was a lot of it, so I have leftovers for tomorrow.

[Kevin72]

I love lamb; lamb shanks or shoulder braised with white wine, rosemary, and garlic is probably #3 on my list of Reasons Why Kevin Can't Be A Vegetarian.

Finally managed to turn my wife around on it this past year but I still have to be fairly aggressive and trim away a good portion of the fat when I make it.

[rooftop1000]

I just this min remembered when I started loving lamb. My grandmother let me cook at a very young age and would keep stuff around that I could make myself. Sometimes it was minute steaks...never knew it was often filet mignon that I would pan sear and put on toast, but often it was little lamb steaks/chops the round bone from the leg. They cooked very fast and I loved em.

When I took over Easter dinner I started doing a butterflied leg on the BBQ. It never occurred to me anyone might not like it. They Were confused that I was putting the meat on the grill at the same time as setting out the rest of the food on the table.

I really dont think anyone in either family had ever grilled a holiday meal before

Oh well there is a leg in the freezer but I have to go cook a butt now...well soon

tracey