Wizard Recipes

You don’t have to deplete your savings to incorporate quality meat into a meal.

While less-expensive cuts often require more time to cook or marinate to keep them tender, the end result will be rich and flavorful. Here are some tips to help stretch your dinner dollar:

• Buy larger cuts of meat; they’re often sold at a lower price per pound than smaller ones. Ask the butcher to cut the pork shoulder arm picnic, beef chuck shoulder, beef rump, or bottom round roast into smaller pieces, or purchase family packs of meat in bulk from a club store. Label and freeze any portions you’re not going to use right away.
• Look for the bone-in choices from less tender meats. They tend to cost less, and the bone adds a depth of flavor to stews and soups. Look for chuck blade steaks, shoulder lamb chops, veal breast, and lamb shanks.
• Don’t shy away from fat. The leaner the cut, the more expensive it’ll be. Fresh ham, beef chuck, and cross-rib pot roast are tender and juicy after a long braise, and the fat can easily be skimmed off after cooking

L A M B

The unique, relatively mild flavor of lamb calls for bold seasonings like garlic, rosemary, and wine or intriguing combinations of assertive, exotic spices and sweet fruits.

Buying Lamb

Americans generally prefer the milder taste of young lamb, and the good news is that most supermarket lamb is from animals six to twelve months old. Baby lamb (milk-fed lamb) is less than two months old and has a delicate flavor and pale pink color.

Even though it is raised year-round, so-called spring lamb (Easter lamb) comes from slightly older sheep up to five months old.

Both of these younger lambs are specialty items that are most easily found during the holiday season at ethnic butchers. Look for lamb from Australia and New Zealand in supermarkets and in butcher shops.

The cuts are smaller than those of American lamb, since they come from smaller-not younger-animals, but you can count on the meat to be tender and flavorful. When shopping for lamb, look for meat that is pinkish red.

Darker meat indicates an older animal, and it will have a stronger flavor. The fat should look white, firm, and waxy. The bones should be porous and unsplintered, with a reddish tinge at the cut end.

If you buy a large cut of lamb, such as a whole leg, be sure the fell (the thin membrane covering the fat) has been removed. If necessary, peel it off with the help of a sharp knife. In any case, the fat should be trimmed away so only a thin covering remains.

Storing Lamb

Lamb chops, stew meat, and roasts can be stored for up to two days in the refrigerator. Ground lamb is quite perishable, so it should be used within one day of purchase.

Spanish padres and English pioneers brought the first sheep to the United States. Using sheep for meat and clothing, the padres expanded their missions for the next 3 centuries.

Today, lamb is produced in every state in the United States, even though the average citizen eats only 1 to 2 pounds of lamb a year. In other countries, lamb is prized for its hearty flavor.

The American aversion to the meat may be because sheep were originally bred for wool first and then consumed for meat. The older lamb resulted in a stringy, tough piece of meat. Today, animals are bred for only one purpose, and the meat has a finer consistency and a better flavor.

To qualify as a lamb, a sheep must be younger than a year. However, most lambs are sent to market at 6 months or younger. Baby lamb and spring lamb are both milkfed and slaughtered before they are weaned. Regular lamb is slaughtered before it reaches 12 months of age. Lambs between 12 and 24 months are yearlings.

Mutton, the meat of sheep more than 2 years old, has a much stronger flavor and less tender flesh. Mutton has gained a reputation among Americans as inedible, but with proper slow-cooking methods, that reputation is unwarranted. Even so, mutton is difficult to buy in the United States.

Most lamb available at your local supermarket will be the more tender spring lamb. Lamb is leaner, too, because of selective breeding practices and because the meat is trimmed of more excess fat before packaging.

There are five USDA grades for lamb, based on the proportion of lean meat to fat: prime, choice, select, utility, and cull. Most of the lamb sold today is choice. Use color as a guide to purchase lamb.

A general rule is that the color gets darker as the animal gets older. For example, baby lamb is pale pink, and regular lamb is pinkish red.

You also can use the weight of a leg of lamb to judge its age. The more a leg weighs, the older the animal was at slaughter. A large leg, nearing 10 pounds, then, will have strong flavor and tougher flesh. Mutton legs are around 12 pounds.

Preparation Tips

Many cuts of lamb are sold with the fat already trimmed, but on some cuts, such as the leg or shoulder, thick external fat remains. Have your butcher remove this layer, or do it yourself before you are ready to cook the lamb. Leaving the fat in place will cause the amount of saturated fat to skyrocket, and the lamb will take on a stronger taste that many Americans, unaccustomed to lamb, might find displeasing.

Lamb fat burns at a much lower temperature than other animal fat, and the lamb is left with a smoky, fatty aftertaste. You also need to remove the fell, a membrane that encases the surface fat. The fell is left on some larger cuts to help trap the natural juices.

The fell is inedible, and neither heat nor seasonings can penetrate it. The cuts you most often find at your grocery store - leg of lamb, rack of lamb, chops, and loin - can be cooked by roasting, broiling, sautéing, or grilling.

But if you are planning to serve the lamb rare or medium-rare, which is recommended, rib chops surpass shoulder chops. A quickread thermometer inserted in the thickest portion of the meat should read 145° Fahrenheit (medium-rare). Chops cut from the shoulder are best slowly braised.

The size of a rack of lamb depends on the kind of sheep. An American-raised sheep will have a rack with seven to eight ribs, weighing approximately 2 pounds and feeding three or four people. A rack from a New Zealand sheep may weigh only 1 pound and feed two people.

Serving Suggestions

Leg of lamb is a traditional dish at Easter, and lamb and mutton are common ingredients in Middle Eastern couscous dishes. Lamb also makes a wonderful meat for kabobs, the best cut being leg meat cut into 1-inch cubes. Complementary seasonings include garlic, mustard, basil, mint, rosemary, and sage.

Lamb fat solidifies once the meat cools, so the meat should be served on warm plates. Lamb stew meat usually is cut from the shoulder, neck, breast, or leg (this might also be called a lamb shank). Use it in place of beef, pork, or veal in any slow-cooked stew or braised meat recipe.

Use ground lamb as you would use ground beef. The less tender cuts of lamb (shoulder, breast, shank) are best marinated.

Here are some assorted hints to help you with your meat cooking.

Beef. This list from the National Cattlemen’s Association gives you beef steaks with decreasing degree of tenderness.

¨ Tenderloin

¨ Chuck top blade

¨ Top loin

¨ Porterhouse/T-bone

¨ Rib

¨ Rib-eye

¨ Chuck-eye

¨ Round tip

¨ Top sirloin

¨ Chopped steak

Veal. Veal comes from young cattle. It is a very tender, light-colored meat with little or no fat and connective tissue. They market virtually all veal and calf fresh (not frozen). The meat has a high moisture content and doesn’t improve with aging as beef does, so you want to use it soon after purchase.

Baby veal is the most tender and lightest in color of all veal but with very little flavor. It comes from baby animals of mere 2 or 3 days old that weigh between 22 and 55 pounds (10 and 25 kg) (not much more than a large tom turkey).

Meat labeled veal comes from slightly older 1 to 3-month old animals that were entirely milk-fed. The meat is white (there is no iron in milk that would darken the color). If the veal is not white, the animal had supplemental feed, that turns the color pink. Meat labeled calf is still from a young animal in the 3 to 8-month range, just a little older than veal. Calf meat is tender but no longer a light pink color.

Baby beef is another category you occasionally see at the meat counter. This comes from immature, 7 to 10-month old cattle. Ranchers usually sell these when economic reasons or adverse weather conditions force them to reduce herd size. Although low-priced, this meat isn’t a good buy because these young animals have already lost the desirable characteristics of veal, but haven’t yet developed the true beef flavor and marbling.

By itself, veal is dry with little flavor. Its low fat and high moisture content does poorly in dry heat cooking. It is best if you sauté veal (because frying oil adds lubrication), or serve it in rich sauces or with high-fat fillings. Retail cuts of veal are similar to beef, but the size is smaller-veal round steak, for example, is smaller than a beef round steak.

Pork. Because pork used to be much fatter, you may have to alter recipes from older cookbooks. Add a little more liquid and baste more frequently to compensation for today’s leaner pork.

Like other red meats, pork is best when you roast it slowly at a low oven temperature. If you rush it, you’ll lose more liquid and a hard outside crust forms that heat cannot penetrate evenly. Part of the roast may be done while the rest is still pink. The hard crust also makes carving thin slices difficult.

Cured pork cuts. Salt pork and some brine-cured hams (Virginia and Smithfield, for example) are too salty for many people’s tastes. The answer is to soak some of the salt out. If it is a whole ham, soak it for 24 hours, changing the water many times. A small piece of salt pork takes much less time. Cover it with cold water, bring it to a boil, and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes.

Salt content, age of the meat and texture all make a difference. No exact timeline exists to guide you how long to soak a particular piece of salted meat. Let the piece of meat soak a while and then give it a lick test. Keep doing this until you are satisfied with the flavor.

Bacon. Have you ever wondered how much edible meat you actually get when you buy bacon? I selected three different brands: a high-quality bacon from a butcher shop, a better quality bacon from a supermarket deli counter and a standard lower-priced, but not bottom-of the-line brand, from the supermarket display case. I carefully weighed each batch on a laboratory scale and fried them to identical crispness, then weighed the final edible portions again.

The butcher shop bacon and the better-quality supermarket bacon yielded close to the same amount of meat-about 35 percent of the original weight. The standard brand only yielded 27.5 percent.What I lost, nearly three-quarters of the total, was fat and water. The higher-priced bacon had better flavor and the cost per pound (or per kilo) of the edible portion worked out about the same as of the lower-priced bacon.

When you buy bacon, it is more economical to buy a better-quality package and you get a better flavor. Considering such a high loss, bacon costs more than most of the highest-quality meats.

In fact, the price of the edible portion is only just below the price of the highest-priced item in the butcher’s display, fully trimmed beef tenderloin steak or filet mignon.

Lamb. Lamb has a delicate flavor, but to retain it without a gamy overtone, know how to cook it properly. Lamb fat is a hard fat with a lower smoking point than other animal fats, and it burns easily if the temperature is too high. Once it burns, it develops an unpleasant odor and flavor. Never roast lamb in an oven higher than 325°F (165°C).

Leg of lamb has a thin membrane completely surrounding the meat, separating it from the fat layer. This is called the fell. The butcher doesn’t remove it because it holds the bundle of muscle together and helps to retain moisture during cooking. It should be removed, however, in steaks and chops. If it is still there, simply pull it off with your fingers.

If you don’t do this before grilling or broiling, the heat shrinks the fell and makes the meat buckle-as a result it browns unevenly and looks unappealing. Scoring the fell in several places also helps to avoid curling. The term spring lamb refers to the very tender meat from lambs born in the spring, but in North America today it has no meaning because of improved shipping. Lamb ranchers and processors provide young, tender, spring-lamb quality meat year round.

In California, Arkansas and parts of the South, young lambs are born in the fall and flourish in the mild winter. They provide tender meat before the true spring lambs are born in cooler parts of the country.