Leg and shoulder of lamb from Hallal butchers

[paulfire]

I have noticed that lamb seems to be the equivalent price to platinum, and where can you buy mutton? So all those sheep, millions of them in this Country don't seem to be reflected in the price or availability. I had noticed that an Asian store in an area of Bolton had a butchery department so made a visit, lamb/mutton on sale, goat too, loads of chicken, not much beef and of course NO PORK. I chose a 3kg leg and shoulder cost £12.40, it was described as lamb but I think she was older!
Prepared a rub of mainly garden herbs(rosemary, sage, oregano) and few spices including Ras Al Hanout (fragrant,lovely)
Left in the fridge overnight
So up at 0630 excel fired up with restaurant charcoal from LWP, rapidly up to 290, meat on at 0730 planned schedule eight hour cook at 240* foil half way, basting when I can, out at 1500/1600, rest, eat.
All ok so far? Well this was my first use of this fuel and whether I put too much in the basket, it stayed at 290* even closing all the vents took an hour to get down to 260* fearsome fuel. I had to loosely foil the meat for its own protection!
Anyway, normality began, basting with a wet version of the rub up to foiling at around 1230, reached an internal temp of 190* at 1530, carefully removed the still foiled meat to a warm oven to rest at 1600.
The meat pulled apart like it should, a few tendons and the like, clean bones, nice herby crust, beautiful .
In wraps with a Morrocan style lentil sauce and cucumber salad, food heaven.
The excel was still at 240* when I checked at2300, fearsome fuel.
So if you want Lamb, Mutton or Goat get down to an Hallal butchers, they seem to have cornered the market.

[kwazulu]

Great tip about the halal butcher! Thanks

[aris]

I buy alot of my meat from halal butchers (minus the pork of course!). At one stage they were selling whole lambs for 4.49/kg - cut up any way you like.

[keith157]

They often do chicken wings cheap if you ask them to save them for you. Certainly when we lived in East London the local Halal butchers threw them away as they had no call for them.

[aris]

They often do chicken wings cheap if you ask them to save them for you. Certainly when we lived in East London the local Halal butchers threw them away as they had no call for them.

That isn't the case any more - they are typically the same price or more expensive at Halal butchers. One intersting thing I have seen is that you can buy wings fully skinned from them. Must be a fair bit of labour to do that. In fact that is the one NICE thing about shopping at halal butchers - they cut all excess fat off - then weigh the meat. So when you buy 1kg of chopped lamb leg or shoulder for a stew - that is 1kg of pure meat, no bone, minimal fat.

[keith157]

Cheers Aris, guess its back to supermarkets for the wings

[aris]

Cheers Aris, guess its back to supermarkets for the wings

Indeed I tend to buy my wings at the supermarket. Little tip (haha), I find that the smaller wings are more succulent, have more meat, and less bone on them than those jumbo monster ones. The larger ones tend to have alot of bone. Smaller wings also cook faster/better if you're grilling them rather than low/slow.

[keith157]

Earlier in the year we got some from Costco, really evenly sized and with the wing tip removed. Last time I went I was emphatically told they have never sold fresh wings!!
I generally use supermarket wings, for eveness of size Tesco & Sainsburys are IMO best, Asda tends to be a rough selection, great for adding to stock or for general eating, I wouldn't serve them to guests though.