Everything You Need to Know About Lamb

Everything You Need to Know About Lamb

Last Thursday’s All About Lamb class turned out to be a remarkable opportunity. You not only learned everything you need to know about lamb, but you also got the chance to roll up your sleeves, and, sharp boning knife in hand, dive right into a leg of lamb to experience what it means to butcher it yourself!

Slicing slow roasted lamb
Slicing slow roasted lamb

Chef-Instructor, Bridget Charters, was joined by Anderson Valley Rancher, Reed Anderson. Reed explained how his beautiful grass-fed lambs are raised while Bridget demonstrated, with brisk sure-handed strokes of the knife, how to take apart a bone-in leg of lamb and separate it into the various muscle groups, with tips and advice on how to best cook each cut.

grilling the kofte
grilling the kofte

Before we started our own butchering, we enjoyed a generous and delicious taste that included grilled lamb kofte, slices of slow roasted lamb that were beautifully pink and utterly tender, and a ramekin of lamb stew with olives.

the lamb tastes
the lamb tastes

Of course, butchering the leg of lamb was not quite as easy as Bridget made it look (ok, she has a ton of experience, and she is a highly skilled butcher), but it could be done! The Hot Stove Society staff strolled the room and helped us out, giving tips on how to hold the knife and how much fat to trim from our chunks of lamb.

Success!
Success!

Every guest took home a whole lotta lamb. (At home, we marinated and grilled one big chunk of lamb in the Bengal herb-spice paste recipe from Tom’s Big Dinners that was included in our recipe packet, and we froze the rest.) But even if, most of the time, you will buy lamb that’s already boned out, the experience you gain in this class will really raise your lamb IQ! So satisfying to discover you can do it yourself!