Beef prices seem to edge higher and higher. Consumers are putting up with it. Demand is persistent. Still, it gets pretty intense when your favorite steaks in USDA Prime grade are running $30 per pound. Sure, you are going to pay three times that at a local restaurant, but even eating at home is starting to break the bank.
Imagine my shock this weekend when I found a sale on lamb roasts, boneless shoulders, from Australia on sale to the point that they were $5.50 a pound, which is the same as or lower than ground beef. This is astonishing to me. Clearly I stocked up as best I could.
We are talking about premium lamb at a fifth of the price of prime-grade beef steaks! Once the reality of this became clear, I acted. This year is going to be the year of lamb.
I’ve always regarded lamb as a luxury meat, something reserved for holidays and special occasions because it is so expensive. But careful price watching reveals that it does not have to be. It can be an everyday staple, a real replacement for beef.
At this point in this article, I promise you that half the readers are saying: No way, I don’t like lamb. I find this intriguing because it makes no sense to me. To be sure, I was not raised with it. I’m from Texas, and lamb was not part of our diet. Making my way out in the world, I ran across a Nepalese restaurant and ordered lamb biryani. It tasted to me like the best meal I had ever had. My lifetime devotion to lamb began there.
What we like to eat and what we think we do not like is often wrapped in mystery. It could be an experience. Could be childhood. Could be just cultural signaling, such as how we think of lambs as cute and personified in childhood rhymes. Religion might play a role, too, but in this case, surely not: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have long celebrated lamb as food. The resistance does seem uniquely American.
The common aversion to lamb might trace to experiences not quite as wonderful as mine. A major issue is that people expect it to taste like beef when it actually has a completely different flavor profile. Instead of that familiar iron-like taste, lamb meat is sweeter and perhaps oilier. It calls for different complementary flavors too. Instead of ketchup and mustard, lamb wants herbs and spices such as rosemary, thyme, and garlic. It is served not with cheese and butter but rather raisins, dates, and cashews.
There does not seem to be an obvious explanation for the American resistance to lamb but for the fact that beef beat it in a market sense. After all, the United States was born as a British colony, and even now lamb is preferred in all commonwealth countries. The British love for lamb somehow never transferred to the United States, probably because of the vast spaces available in the United States for cows to graze and the rise of a well-developed beef industry.
An experience from World War II might have played a huge role, one that has been passed down through the generations. The U.S. government was looking for inexpensive and durable rations for soldiers. The military came across canned mutton made in Australia and elsewhere. The Army and Navy bought as much as they could and fed it to all the soldiers.
Mutton is mature lamb and has a completely different taste. It is extremely rich and unfailingly gamey, something you eat in a pinch but don’t particularly desire. An entire generation of soldiers was fed this stuff for years while at war. When the troops came home, they wanted nothing to do with mutton or lamb or anything from a sheep. This was not that long ago, but it absolutely broke whatever connection Americans had with lamb.
For many Americans today, their introduction to lamb came through a circuitous route, through the cuisine of immigrants from India and Middle Eastern countries, along with a spice profile that is not native to American culture. This was certainly my experience and why I fell in love with it. That said, Americans tend to think of lamb as foreign and exotic—not British at all but more associated with distant lands.
There are many ways to cook it. Years ago, I held a house party that featured a gigantic crowned roast rack of lamb. It’s quite the dazzling presentation, but the payoff is really perhaps not as impressive. In the end, you are eating that half-dollar-sized piece of meat on the end of a lamb bone. If volume and abundance are what you are going for, this is not the best route.
Others like to grill a marinated and butterflied shoulder, serving it medium or medium rare with plenty of salt. That’s another way to go but still offers some palate challenges. You can do the same in an oven, roasting it with spices to reach medium, which is 140 degrees, much hotter than beef. It will be red and delicious. Even then, if you are introducing lamb, this might not be the best way to go.
My preferred method is slow roasting or braising to the point that the meat falls off the bone. If it is a boneless cut, it can be pulled apart with a fork.
(It’s astonishing to me how so many people do not know the basic rule of cooking meats: There is rare to well done, but after that point, the meat will seize up and be nearly inedible. Pushing beyond this point, in a covered dish, the meat gives up and turns the other direction toward ever more tender until it falls apart. However you are going to prepare it, you must make a decision between these two approaches.)
This braising method begins with a roasting pan or Dutch oven. In the bottom, I sprinkle salt and pepper generously, and add fresh rosemary in abundance, along with coriander, cumin, garlic (powdered, chopped, or whole), paprika, and a dash of hot chili. I roll the shoulder in that mixture to get it completely covered. At this point, I put the meat in a hot oven (450 degrees) for 20–30 minutes.
Pull it out and add a cup of wine, plus dates or raisins, carrots and parsnips, and some parsley. There are endless variations of what you can use.
Cover it up and turn down the oven to 240 degrees. At this point, you can just forget about the entire roast for six to eight hours. It will slow cook and fully break down. When it comes time to serve, you can put the entire thing atop a large bed of rice. Use the leftover juices to make a gravy of sorts with a bit of flour for thickener and some cream. Pour that on top and serve.
Truly, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would not love having this served. It is astonishingly delicious and not in the least bit strange, as people expect of lamb. The leftovers (and there will likely be some unless you are serving eight people) can be used for a shepherd’s pie or for sandwiches in pita bread. There are many other uses for leftover lamb cooked this way.
You can see that the entire flavor profile is different from beef. That’s the key to understanding. It wants these sweet and aromatic vegetables, herbs, and spices. It’s all a matter of changing your expectations for what the meat is and what it does. There is absolutely no historical or cultural reason why lamb should exist in such a deprecated category; quite the opposite.
There is no reason to live with your great-great-grandfather’s biases. Clearly, the price signals are telling us that now is the time for lamb!
