Lamb Stew

lambstewWhat I don’t understand is how on the one hand I can’t drive five minutes from my house on any given day without passing a flock of sheep, yet the price of lamb in this country is so high. Especially when you get an entire forequarter; they don’t do anything to it except wrap it and freeze it, so why the premium price?

If you do get a lamb forequarter, this is an easy way to enjoy a little bit of the lamb. Think of it as a personal appetizer for the hours your going to be working over the main attraction. No one’s going to miss the neck, right? And just maybe if someone’s extra helpful in the kitchen, they’ll get a taste.

Then again, maybe not.

Thankfully, this is not a terribly involved or complicated recipe. The tricky parts are all about the butchering. And since it’s a stew anyway, you don’t need much finesse. Be careful when separating the bones that your knife doesn’t slip, and use a heavy enough knife that you’re not going to snap the blade. You simply need to work the knife into the space between the bones and twist the knife so the bones separate. Then cut around to release them from the ligaments.

You can read the recipe here.

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8 thoughts on “Lamb Stew”

  1. What do you consider expensive? I buy my full 1/4 lamb, including approx 9-10 kilos of neck, shoulder, ribs and chops for 60 ILS/kg at Yeynot Bitan. I think that's a pretty good deal.

    1. Yeynot Bitan has a 1/4 lamb right now for 70 ILS/kg. But my Meat Tracker spreadsheet tells me that 3 out of the last five sales have been for 60 ILS/kg. Waiting for the next sale could save you up to 100 shekels on the whole piece.

      I usually have them remove the shoulder and I break it down the way I like from there. I remove the steaks/chops from the top of the rack. I take as little rib as possible when I separate them. I cut them into nice thick steaks for grilling. Then I remove the "brisket" and that leaves me with a nice, big thick rack of ribs.

      So for about 540 shekels I get 8 steaks, a full rack of ribs, a breast/brisket, a shoulder, and a neck and shank for stew/maqlubeh.

    2. I"ll have to check it out the next time I'm in Modiin.. I'm in the Jlem area.

      60 shekels is still expensive for ten seconds on a band saw and maybe an hour of nikkur. You probably spend the better part of an hour breaking it down but you were the one doing it, not the butcher.

      I'm in the middle of writing the followup posts to this one: Boning a lamb shoulder and Boneless Lamb Shoulder Roast.

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