"faking" expensive cuts of meat at home.

[Shannow]

I know that lamb isn't widely used in other countries, but one of my families faves is Lamb Backstrap, grilled, and sliced thinly and used with pita bread tzaziki and salad...but it's expensive...$22US/lb expensive.

One of the Oz cooking shows has a butcher on it who shows how to buy cheap, and cook great...an episode a couple of weeks ago made so much (common) sense that we are going to have a crack this weekend.

He laid out a lamb backstrap, and explained...single muscle, fibres running longitudinally. Cook it, cut it (clearly accross the grain), and it's melt in the mouth tender...same as fillet. Shrinks longitudinally in cooking as the fibres shorten.

The showed a piece of lamb shank...a stabilising muscle group, made up of lots of of muscles, criss crossing in structure...all of them shrink longitudinally, compressing the ball as it cooks, and half the time you are biting across the grain...made perfect sense...we cook them low and slow so that they start to fall apart "fork tender".

Then proceeded to pull apart a lamb shoulder roast, using a boning knife.

For the big muscles, he followed the silver sheath between them, and dissected the larger muscles into individual muscles, all of which could be treated similarly to backstrap.

Explained that same technique could be applied to many different cuts of cheaper meat, to make "good" cuts that aren't time effective for a butcher to carry out in the home with a bit of fiddling.

Have been trying to find the episode on line, but those of us who have hunted game and butchered them ourselves probably get the gist.

Explains why rabbits are so danged tough at times.

 

[bbhero]

Makes total sense to me too.

I just like slow smoking many cuts of meat. More fun and relaxing.

However, this very precise butchering idea makes a whole lot of sense.

 

[dlundblad]

I’m surprised it’s so expensive there.

Heck, you buy it here and most of the time it either comes from Australia or New Zealand.

 

[Kamele0N]

Originally Posted By: Shannow

Have been trying to find the episode on line, but those of us who have hunted game and butchered them ourselves probably get the gist.


Funny to see/read how many steps you need for that lamb to became soft...

We buy locally...from our friends...and lambs or cows are grazing outside for a whole year(except in wintertime)...that way whatever you do with that meat...its soft...you have to be really lame to "fubar" anything in a process

 

[CT8]

Originally Posted By: Kamele0N
Originally Posted By: Shannow

Have been trying to find the episode on line, but those of us who have hunted game and butchered them ourselves probably get the gist.


Funny to see/read how many steps you need for that lamb to became soft...

We buy locally...from our friends...and lambs or cows are grazing outside for a whole year(except in wintertime)...that way whatever you do with that meat...its soft...you have to be really lame to "fubar" anything in a process

Buying local raise food is the best.

 

[Claud]

Anyone can cook high quality food, it making cheap food taste good that takes skill.
Incidentally, is mutton readily available near where you live?. It is possible to buy it in the UK, but takes a while to find it.

Claud.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: Kamele0N
Originally Posted By: Shannow

Have been trying to find the episode on line, but those of us who have hunted game and butchered them ourselves probably get the gist.


Funny to see/read how many steps you need for that lamb to became soft...

We buy locally...from our friends...and lambs or cows are grazing outside for a whole year(except in wintertime)...that way whatever you do with that meat...its soft...you have to be really lame to "fubar" anything in a process

You've missed the point completely.

What Shannow is describing is proper butchering, they way in which meat is cut to yield the best from that animal.

It's not that your Slovenian lamb meat is better than Aussie lamb meat, it's that Shannow has discovered that he can butcher a back strap (AKA tenderloin) into filets, known as filet mignon in the US. He's performed a step that normally takes place at the butchers.

The tender lamb meat that you're bragging about was properly butchered.

Butchering some cuts yourself saves money. You get some great cuts of meat. My wife does the same thing. She's quite a cook.

If you've ever hunted, you already know about this...back straps are the best part of a hog, deer, elk, etc...and butchering the meat to yield cuts with short cross grain (like looking at end grain on a piece of wood) makes for the most tender cut from that part of the animal.

 

[Andy636]

The wrap you are referring to it's called Shawarma

I love sheep meat and in Christian Orthodox tradition, lamb is a must on the easter table, so I had it all my life.

If you want your lamb roast to taste delicious and be tender, trow in a couple of spoons of red wine.

The best tasting though it's not the lamb, but the older ones (I think it's called mutton) 4+ years old, that got fattened.

I'm surprised about the price down under, over here it costs about 5 usd/KG

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: Andy636
The wrap you are referring to it's called Shawarma

Nah, Souvlaki...

I like the middle east spices, the kids like the greek.

Originally Posted By: Andy636
I'm surprised about the price down under, over here it costs about 5 usd/KG


Lamb roast (leg) is $6.75US/KG, bone in. Shoulder $11.50 deboned.

Thus the thread...

 

[Alfred_B]

We very rarely get lamb here -- found at Trader Joe's and sometimes in supermarkets.

I used to love it -- used it to make souvlaki or shish kebabs (mixed with pork).

 

[Shannow]

eg. with my newly oversharpenned filleting knife instead of a boning knife.

4 decent sized muscles, shank and bone for stock, and a little pile of cat meat where the supportive stuff around the joint is going every which way...and little pile of fat and gristle.