Mutton Question

[sarah]

hey guys!
i bought a 6lb. leg of goat yesterday..having some guests on sunday,what i wanna do with it,is to roast it.But i'm not sure what temperature and how much time would be appropriate for a real tender juicy mutton roast.I was thinking maybe 3 hours at 350.One more thing,am i supposed to cover it with the lid of the roasting pan,or foil?or i shouldnt cover it at all?

 

[Robo410]

goat is goat, and mutton is mature lamb. Goat or kid if it is young, is very tasty and somewhere between full flavor pork and lamb. roast as you would a bone in leg of lamb, 350, 20 min per pound so about 2 hours...maybe a little less if you bring it to room temp first (15 min per pound.) goat responds well to garlic, lemmon, onion, curry etc. salt and pepper. much as lamb.

it also grills well (butterfly it...take the bone out.)

I would not tent it.

 

[sarah]

there are 2 categories of mutton,lamb or goat,both are called mutton...
Thanks for your suggestions Robo! i'm gonna bake it at 350 for 2 hrs or more if needed,i want it realllll tender,and i think i will cover it for one hour and then let it bake uncovered for another hour...

 

[AlexR]

Mutton - what beast are we talking about?

Hi Sarah,

As far as I know, mutton only refers to lamb.

As for the cooking, I'd put slivers of garlic, cover it in olive oil, and put aromatic herbs on it.

I don't tend to roast things (except for beef, where close attention needs to be paid) scientifically. I'd put the thing on medium-high heat for about 2-2 1/2 hours.

I find there's not much meat on goat... Contrary to what you might think, the taste is not strong or gamey.

Best regards,
Alex R.

 

[Ishbel]

The only way I've eaten goat is curried in the Jamaican fashion.

And like the others, I've never heard goat referred to as mutton - but I'm willing to be proved wrong.

Mutton in the UK is how we usually refer to 'elderly' sheep meat. And it is extremely difficult to get hold of nowadays, although when I was a girl, mutton stew was a staple, and so was using mutton as the base for Scotch broth soup.

 

[Haggis]

Same over here Ishbel, people seem to have forgotten about mutton, probably because its seen as a lesser quality meat. Its unfourtunate that you don't see it in butchers over here.

I would be keen to try mutton to see how it differs to lamb but I think I would be pretty hard pressed to find it here.

 

[sarah]

well mutton is a kind of meat which is staple in the sub continent,most commonly found and eaten among all meats,and there are hundreds of ways its cooked and eaten,so its nothing new for me,in some parts of pakistan,like the areas that are adjacent to afghanistan and Iran,lamb is more common,whereas in the rest of the country,good quality goats are preferred,i personally prefer goat over lamb,as the taste is more delicious and it doesnt smell,like lamb does sometimes...
Mutton is also used widely in the middle eastern and mediterranian countries,whereas i know that in USA and Europe beaf and pork are more common meats.

 

[kitchenelf]

Sarah,

A local Jamaican restaurant makes a curried goat. Very similar to stew beef - the meat absolutely falls apart. The curry is a great flavor with the goat. Personally I would use my pressure cooker or as you said in a Dutch oven and I would not cover it. All the recipes I looked at used around a 3# leg and roasted in oven at 375° for about 1 hour.

Either I would turn the heat down and roast your 3 hours or leave the heat at 375 and roast for maybe 1 1/2 - 2 hours? 165° internal temperature. But if it's like a pork butt you want the internal temperature to be much higher as it is more tender then.

Sorry, I guess none of that really helped you - I wish I was going to be there on Sunday though!!!

 

[Sandyj]

Sarah, where did you find this mutton? Was it from a farmer? Mutton was often on the menu on Sundays (sheep). My mom starts off her mutton plainly, with, of all things, 6 glugs of vinegar, then a bit of oil (in the olden days, it was a heaped spoon of saved fat from previous roasts). Then salt and pepper and maybe some onion powder. Does that sound gross. She doesn't cover her roast, and she cooks it at about 375F until done. About 45 minutes before done, she throws in her pototatoes. My mom is a very plain cook, but this comes out so tasty. The vinegar thing - I don't know where she gets that from, but she does it with other roasts, too. I tried to figure out how much a "glug" is from the vinegar bottle - the kind she uses is the very large bottle - my estimate is 1 glug = 1 oz. -Sandyj

 

[Sandyj]

Sarah, I forgot - the reason I asked you where you found your mutton is just that I've never ever seen it in the US. I wouldn't mind buying some, and I'm prepared to order.
Hope your guests enjoyed their dinner - I'm sure it was/is/will be lovely. Sandyj

 

[Ishbel]

Haggis
I can get mutton (occasionally) from my local, organic butcher. He farms the beasts (as we call livestock!) on his family farm.

I tend only to use it for either Scotch broth, or traditional Scotch pies, which are raised, water crust pies with a mutton filling, but nowadays you normally find that beef is substituted in the commercial variety!

 

[Haggis]

Yeah here in Australia its pretty much just lamb lamb lamb. Poor blighters don't stand a chance of being reared past that stage...unless its female.

Might take a closer look round some of the Greek (or similar area) and speciality butchers, see if I can get my hands on some.

 

[Ishbel]

Sarah
Your comments about goat being called mutton on the Indian subcontinent intrigued me enough to do a quick google search on 'what is mutton'.... This is what came up

Definitions of mutton on the Web:

• [size=-1]
• mouton: meat from a mature domestic sheep
• em: the square of a body of any size of type
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn[/size]
  
  [size=-1]
• A sheep is any of several woolly ruminant quadrupeds, but most commonly the Domestic Sheep (Ovis aries), which probably descends from the wild moufflon of south-central and south-west Asia. For other types of sheep and their close relatives, see goat antelope. For more information on the raising and breeding of sheep, see "Sheep husbandry."
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutton[/size]
  
  [size=-1]
• The meat from fully grown sheep.
  teachers.edenpr.org/~rolson/ArcadiaWeb/Glossary/Glossary.html[/size]
  
  [size=-1]
• (sheep) lamb
  encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Meat[/size]
  
  [size=-1]
• (French, mouton). A gold coin impressed with the image of a lamb.
  www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/data/871.html[/size]
  
  [size=-1]
• Strongly flavored flesh of sheep over two years old; is less tender than that of a younger lamb.
  www.tyson.com/UserControls/ViewTerms.aspx[/size]
  
  [size=-1]
• refer to em.
  www.sgia.org/glossary/Mm.cfm[/size]
  
  [size=-1]
• flesh of sheep or lamb.
  www.amazoneswomandrummers.com/html/glossary.html[/size]
  
  [size=-1]
• The flesh of fully grown sheep

I think it is interesting that nowhere lists goatmeat as mutton. I wonder if it is a kind of throwback to the days of the British presence in India when the British (who rarely eat goat) might have substituted goat for mutton in dishes (mutton being more common than lamb in the UK back in those days as it was cheaper!)... thinking that they tasted similar and giving it the generic term 'mutton'?

[/size]

 

[Chief Longwind Of The North]

Hi Sarah,

As far as I know, mutton only refers to lamb.

As for the cooking, I'd put slivers of garlic, cover it in olive oil, and put aromatic herbs on it.

I don't tend to roast things (except for beef, where close attention needs to be paid) scientifically. I'd put the thing on medium-high heat for about 2-2 1/2 hours.

I find there's not much meat on goat... Contrary to what you might think, the taste is not strong or gamey.

Best regards,
Alex R.

I have only heard adult sheep reffered to as mutton. But then again, I'm not in an area that eats much lamb or mutton, and goat in nearly unheard of, except by private individuals who may have a few.

I had the pleasure of eating an ornery angora goat that had to be put down, as it was terrorizing the owner. It had the texture and flavor of venison (deer meat), and I found it very tasty. That being said, all meat, whether beef, pork, mutton, goat, or even chicken and turkey, range in flavor depending on the primary feed. Corn-fed goose, for instance, tastes much like corn-fed beef. While a grouse feeding on pine and cedar will have an intense gamey flavor, almost too strong to eat. The same is true of vennison. Deer that have been eating from corn and hay fields will have more fat, and be less gamey than the same animal harvested from a cedar swamp. So, the meat may or may not be gamey, depending on what it's been eating.

As a side note, stay away from animals that have eaten lots of alfalfa. Those it is highly nutritious, and a favorite of grazing animals, it gives the meat, and in the case of dairy animals, the milk, a very unpleasant flavor. I had goat cheese from goats that had been fed alfalfa. I couldn't eat it. And that nasty flavor that comes with herbal vitamins, that's usually alfalfa, again high in nutritional value, lousy taste.

Seeeeeya; Goodweed of the North

 

[Haggis]

Since my Larousse Gastronomique pointed out that Australia actually does produce a lot of mutton due to it being quite a large export to the halal market. Might go hit up some of the middle eastern butchers round abouts where I live.

 

[Yakuta]

Sarah, I did not see this in time but I still wanted to share this for next time.

Here is what I do:

Trim fat from the goat if there is excessive. Wash it and pat it dry with some paper napkins.

Now I rub the goat leg with freshly minced garlic and ginger and lemon juice.

Next I make a dry rub as follows:

6 arabol chillies (dry red chillies found in Indian and Mexican markets)
4 tbsp of cumin seeds
4 tbsp of corrainder seeds

I roast the spices and then grind them in a coffee grinder and rub it all over the leg.

In the morning I place it in a disposable roasting pan, cover it with foil and roast it in a preheated oven (350) for approximately an hour an a half. During this time the goat will release a lot of water.

While the roast is cooking I make a sauce to pour over the goat leg to make it even more juicy.

In a saute pan I add 1/4 cup of oil and saute three onions (finely sliced) until they are golden brown and crisp. I add two cups of creamy yogurt ( I prefer the middleeastern ones) to the crisp onions add 1 tbsp of freshly ground garam masala (I make mine with cinnamon stick, black and white cardamom, cloves, black jeera, whole pepper corn and bay leaves). Take it off the stove and stir in freshly chopped corrainder leaves and mint leaves (about 1/2 cup each).

Take the goat leg out of the oven, pour the sauce and stir it with the pan juices. Now let the roast cook for an hour uncovered (this will allow the liquids to evaporate a bit).

I garnish the goat leg with sliced boiled eggs, some more mint, cilantro and crisp fried potatoes. It goes very well with naan and a seasoned rice pilaf.