Opinions on Lamb

[Heffey de Chefey]

The meat must be inspected by the USDA to be resold. This type of regulation is what keeps Mad Cow disease out of the country.

 

[Janet H]

The meat must be inspected by the USDA to be resold. This type of regulation is what keeps Mad Cow disease out of the country.

I agree. There are feed lots in my part of the world and there are small local producers as well. The smaller farmer can sell to anyone and those cuts do appear on local menus. Restaurants buy directly from these farmers and that's legal. But as I understand it, local producers have their facilities inspected as a matter of course.
Meat processing facilities are also inspected and regulated. There are both federal and state regulations that govern meat sales. I found this was very useful; http://www.extension.org/pages/Meat_Inspection

 

[normatassler]

Roast leg of lamb (no more than 5 lbs.) well seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic--rubbed down with a paste of good olive oil, fresh lemon juice and 2 tsp. ground cinnamon and carefully cooked to rare or medium rare---just heavenly.
Slices of fresh garlic inserted in slits in the leg even better.

 

[les]

Lamb has got more expensive here, most of the large supermarkets sell New Zealand lamb so we've got to pay transport etc, I don't know why they don't plug our own sheep, Welsh lamb is gorgeous

 

[Caslon]

I've noticed in So. Calif. Albertsons has recently gone from selling lamb for stew in plastic wrapped foam trays to fully shrinkwrapped printed packaged bags. It's still from the US. This lamb is easier to trim the fat from, but has lost something in texture. It's like cutting thru liver sorta. Not that bad, but that's how I describe it. Not as flavorful too. It seems a previous poster may be on to something about "finishing off" with more corn feed. That would explain it well. They've gone a bit too far "finishing off." NZ lamb is a bit too gamey tasting to me. So...I'm somewhat dissapointed with the lamb being sold today at my main surpermarkets. So.Calif. doesn't have many mom and pop butcher shops anymore, if they do...too many flies.

 

[Nicholas Mosher]

I'm someone that didn't grow up eating much lamb. Sometimes I can find lamb to be a bit strong for my tastes. I remember getting chops with a lamb reduction at a restaurant once. The chop was great, but the concentrated lamb stock gave me visions of a wool sweater dragged through the mud!

Of course gyro style lamb-loaf is always a welcomed street food with tzatziki and pita.

 

[Claire]

D'ya know, I have no idea where the lamb I buy lived when it was alive. I assume local, but that's a big assumption and I'll ask. The farmers here do lamb, veal, and pork (I'm in a small town in the rural IL/WI/IA tri-state area, so fresh meat and milk are all around me). So much of the national brands for dairy and meat products are actually local here. It never occurred to me to ask. And, yes, we do have a restaurant that features foods by local purveyors; lamb, pork, beef, cheese, veggies. Hmmm. Haven't been there for awhile, guess I'm due to make that dinner tonight!

But the lack of flavor in lamb is not one that I've only noticed here, but often in the many places in this country where I've bought it. I liked the bit of gaminess in the flavor, that was the point of eating it rather than beef. I think all of our lamb when we lived in Hawaii was NZ (it was marked as such). The lamb I buy here, and the veal, are not marked as to where it was raised. Some of the beef is. And I know exactly who I'll ask (one of the employees of my local Piggly-Wiggly raises lambs .... why have I not asked him?). And yes, I feel most meat reflects the diet of the animal when it was alive. If you've ever had venison that lived out west, ranging for itself, and venison that came from a deer that would eat from the corners of farmers' fields in Virgina, or ones that were farm raised for their meat (here), you'd really, really, really know that they are what they eat!

 

[ChefJune]

I thought it was now law that meat packaging had to carry the origin of the meat. However, with "feedlot" meat, the provenance is probably hard to tell. The meat may be raised in one place, and trucked to another for "finishing" and slaughter.

Claire, if I lived where you live, I feel sure I would be sourcing local farmers for meat. Half of my family were farmers from Central Illinois who raised animals for market before the "feedlot" days.

 

[jet]

My lamb memory doesn't go back more than a couple of years, but until very recently I described lamb as "overpriced pork".

 

[Andy M.]

My lamb memory doesn't go back more than a couple of years, but until very recently I described lamb as "overpriced pork".

What happened 'very recently' to change that?

 

[Caslon]

Speaking of lamb (off topic sorta), are there two types of gyros? I ask this because there was a drive thru around here that sold delicious gyros. What was different was the gyro meat. Instead of being brownish and sliced off a big stump (like all i see today), this place marinated chunks of lamb until it turned white. To me...it tasted more authentic greek like. I really don't care for the gyros made from carved brown slices off a stump. I can't even to find a place that even knows what I'm talking about when I describe the gyro's this place used to sell. I miss their way of preparing the lamb for their delicious gyro's. I have not found ONE place around here who marinates their gyro meat until it's the color of chicken.

Are all gyro's made from lamb or could this marinated to white meat have been a beef gyro??? Anyways...anyone ever had a gyro made from marinated meat turned white?

 

[Andy M.]

...this place marinated chunks of lamb until it turned white...

Then, I assume they grilled the chunks.

That's more of a shish kebab sandwich than a gyro. The vertically rotisserie roasted Greek meatloaf mixture that is sliced off the skewer is the stuff gyros are made of.

 

[BreezyCooking]

Agree with Andy - the "chunks of lamb" sandwich you had wasn't a gyro. It was simply a sandwich made with cooked marinated chunks of lamb.

 

[normatassler]

Info on ecoli

When cattle are grass fed, their digestive systems automatically prevent the growth of ecoli bacteria. The rush to have the animals put on weight quickly is why the mega farms feed grain. And so--here comes more ecoli.

 

[jet]

What happened 'very recently' to change that?

I picked up a family pack of lamb chops on sale at a price I couldn't refuse. Boy was I sad to see them go.

Here's what I did with them:
Garlic & Rosemary Lamb Chops
Broiled Lamb Chops
Broiled Lamb Chops with a Madeira Reduction
Lamb Chops & Bacon Mac’n'Cheese

Makes me almost willing to pay full price for some more. I probably would if I knew they would be as good.

 

[Claire]

By the way, I did talk to my lamb expert yesterday, asked him why lamb seems so much milder than I remember eating when I was younger. (Do NOT ask me why I didn't think to ask him before I started this line! Dumb!) His answer went along lines I read here: first of all "we get the lambs to the market much earlier than in previous decades; what you ate when you were younger were much older animals." Do you mean they were closer to mutton than lamb? "Exactly." "... and now they are finished with grain, which also makes for a milder flavor, although they eat grass for most of their lives." "Some of the lamb we sell here is local, some New Zealand, you don't know when you buy it."

OK, there, from the farmer's mouth. His family decided to stop farming lambs, this is his first year lamb-free. I asked if he missed them, yes, he replied. But I'm sure he doesn't miss lambing season (i.e., staying up 24 hours a day helping to deliver difficult cases) and he replied that moving them to fresh pastures all summer wasn't fun, either. It was all more work than anyone wanted to continue with, especially since it wasn't enough for a living, they all had to have "day jobs" as well, putting in regular work weeks on top of taking care of the farm.

 

[Claire]

Where I've eaten, the grilled chunks of meat (usually on a skewer) served with a piece of pita is souvlaki. Regular gyros are the slices of meat (sometimes a pressed combination of lamb and beef, sometimes sliced off a rotisserie) served on pita.

 

[BreezyCooking]

When cattle are grass fed, their digestive systems automatically prevent the growth of ecoli bacteria. The rush to have the animals put on weight quickly is why the mega farms feed grain. And so--here comes more ecoli.

I'm afraid that's not true. There's no difference in E. coli levels between grain-fed & grass-fed cattle. And frankly, even if there was, it makes no difference whatsoever. The problems with E. coli (which is naturally present in the systems of all mammals, including humans) come when the animal enters the slaughter facility & is improperly handled, thus allowing the E. coli naturally present in the fecal matter to come in contact with the meat.

 

[normatassler]

Sorry to disagree. I wish I had the citation on hand; however, the information came from studies performed by a research organization. It seems that grain feeding encourages the growth of ecoli in the digestive system. It is not the only cause.

 

[buckytom]

Speaking of lamb (off topic sorta), are there two types of gyros? I ask this because there was a drive thru around here that sold delicious gyros. What was different was the gyro meat. Instead of being brownish and sliced off a big stump (like all i see today), this place marinated chunks of lamb until it turned white. To me...it tasted more authentic greek like. I really don't care for the gyros made from carved brown slices off a stump. I can't even to find a place that even knows what I'm talking about when I describe the gyro's this place used to sell. I miss their way of preparing the lamb for their delicious gyro's. I have not found ONE place around here who marinates their gyro meat until it's the color of chicken.

Are all gyro's made from lamb or could this marinated to white meat have been a beef gyro??? Anyways...anyone ever had a gyro made from marinated meat turned white?

caslon, what you had was called souvlaki. i, too, prefer it over a gyro.

souvlaki is a greek dish that most people know as kebabs (the middle eastern/turkish word for it), of grilled marinated meat chunks: either beef, pork or lamb. not so much pork in muslim countries, lol.

technically, you had souvlaki on a pita, possibly with tsatsiki sauce, and salad (for lack of a better term).

also, my guess is that you had a mix of lamb and beef, or just lamb flavored beef. if it were all lamb, the type of cuts used for souvlaki would most likely be reddish inside after grilling, not white.

so they might haved reserved lamb fat from a larger roast, then mixed it into the marinade for beef chunks to flavour them.

hth.