What is mutton?
What is mutton is a question often heard in America. Here you can enjoy bbq mutton on the run. However we recommend that you choose your sheep at the two-tooth age; that is around a year old. Then it has the flavour of mutton, but the tenderness of lamb.
This page was last updated by Bernard Preston on 22nd December, 2018.
Ah, whilst writing this page, I see another discerning reader in Norfolk, England, has taken advantage of our cut price on buying both a Frog and a Bat. It is the postage that is so costly today. Happy reading Lara, you will finish them both, I promise. Then pass them on to family and friends, perhaps your GP. No point hamstering books.
The basic ingredients of a mutton recipe are, wait for it, mutton.
What I love about mutton in Holland is that it is the only red meat that you can sure be has enjoyed the great outdoors. It is relatively natural. Beef and pork spend a great deal of their lives indoors fed on corn and whatever. You can certainly taste the difference. An animal that has fed primarily on grass, its natural fodder.
I have no scientific evidence to back it up for our what is mutton page, but with eggs for example, there's ample evidence that the fat profile is quite different between scratch eggs, and chickens fed primarily on corn. They are more healthy. And they taste better, if you have a discerning tongue.
However, no matter how healthy your lamb is, it is still going to be high in saturated fat, the stuff that clogs your arteries. There is an easy and delicious solution; add plenty of your favourite vegetables. Here are mine.
What is mutton?
What is mutton is important for me; it's the tastiest of the red meats in my opinion plus it is not corn fed or reared in a sty.
Corn is high in omega-6; that means inflammation in the body, especially if you're not enjoying fatty fish regularly or its omega-3. A high ratio means angry joints, muscles and arteries; organs too.
- 3 lbs of mutton neck, sliced between bones.
- 3 onions
- 5 potatoes
- 1 eggplant or brinjal.
- 3 to 4 tomatoes, plus extra tomato paste if you're crazy about tomato flavour. I don't add the extra.
- Whole corn of garlic
- Bunch of celery leaves, keep the stalks for your salads and lunch boxes.
- Let your imagine run wild: mushrooms, zuccini, bell peppers, carrot, of course.
- Hot chili pepper
- Ginger
- Salt and pepper, your favourite herbs and spices. Curried mutton? Easy, add the right spices for your Indian mutton recipes.
- Optional, one bottle of beer.
- Handful of fresh lima beans, if you can find any. Growing lima beans ...
Lamb stew
Let us get going.
STEP 1
Cut most of the meat off the bone into pieces about the size of the last digit of your thumb. Then you can cook the neck bones slightly longer to extra the rich gelatine that is full of glucosamine, the stuff that's good for your cartilage.
Pour a little olive oil into a heavy pot, moderate heat, add the mutton vertebrae, turning frequently until lightly browned. Remove.
More olive oil, likewise the mutton pieces. Not too hot, they will burn.
ASIDE 1: Only cook with butter or olive or coconut oil. The polyunsaturate oils like sunflower oil are unstable, and will break down at high heat, forming nasty trans isomers. We eat too much polys anyway, throws your Omega-6 / Omega-3 ratio right out of balance.
ASIDE 2: If you want your mutton recipe to look more like mutton chops, actually mutton neck, than ground mutton goulash, then leave the neck pieces whole. It will take longer to cook.
ASIDE 3: Before braising your mutton neck slices, take
a good look at some of the hyaline cartilage in the joints. It's the
super smooth hard white stuff IN the joint. See the knife below...
That's how you want your spine to stay.
By now the mutton bones should be nearly brown, keep turning them so they don't burn.
STEP 2 @ What is mutton
Meanwhile chop your onions roughly. No need to slice them finely. Then peel the potatoes, leaving them whole, and prepare the garlic and ginger. Do it right, take the time to do fresh garlic and ginger, but it is worth it both because it tastes better, and is not oxidised and full of preservatives.
STEP 3
Scoop out the mutton recipe pieces, keeping the bones and the pieces separate. I confess a lamb stew does take time and our what is mutton page is the exception that proves the rule; this is not good fast, made fast.
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Add a little more olive oil to your skillet, and cook the onions, garlic and thinly sliced fresh ginger on low heat until golden brown. If you are making Indian mutton recipes, this is the stage where you add the curry powder, the masala, the dhania powder, the curry leaves, cinnamon, your favourites.
Meanwhile prepare you other veges. Peel the garlic, and the ginger slicing the latter finely, wash your aubergine and celery leaves and chop them coarsely. If you have a sweet tooth, do not add sugar; rather use some dried fruit. I often toss in half a dozen apricots or a handful of raisins.
STEP 4
Scoop out the onions and garlic plus ginger mix, and place the mutton bones at the bottom followed by the whole potatoes. Or vice versa!
Tip: if obesity is a problem, then the potatoes have to be considered. Either replace them with sweet potatoes, or allow the dish to cool overnight in the refrigerator, and then reheat the next day; this allows the starch to retrograde; it becomes resistant to digestion and absorption in the small intestine forming, instead of glucose, healthy short chain fatty acids in the colon.
STEP 5:
Now cover the mutton recipe bones and potatoes with alternating layers of vegetables and semi chopped/ ground mutton pieces. If you've favoured the Indian mutton recipes version they neighbours' noses will be twitching by now, and the kids will be calling: What is cooking, Dad? I'm no sexist but this is definitely brave work.
ASIDE: Let the squaw clean up the mess. I just tossed out my favourite potato peeler with the peels. Twit. Her favourite too, I am in trouble. "GET OUT OF MY KITCHEN!"
Add the beer and turn onto moderate heat until boiling, and then turn right down. Watch it carefully, it may run dry and burn if the heat is too high.
I like to add the coarsely chopped tomatoes (and, if you are making curried mutton, the fresh coriander leaves, nearer the end. Not shown.
About an hour from when you add the beer. Meantime, with all this cholesterol in your What is Mutton recipes start to prepare your side dishes.
What's for dinner?
Meantime, the good wife's been busy with Helens 15 euro salad, the
one that saved my bacon. Literally. To which I like to add a good dollop
of our authentic hummus recipe. The one you can make in your own
kitchen in only four minutes.
AUTHENTIC HUMMUS RECIPE.
Then, because I have so much cancer in my family, I make sure we will be
having another dish like Helen's very special sauteed mushrooms recipe
along with my what is mutton recipes. Mushrooms are full of anti-malignancy good stuff.
Guess who's come to lunch
Lost-lost Klein Jan Jansen makes a pilgrimage from native Holland to South Africa to find his roots. His father tells him he has no family, and his mother died in childbirth. But Klein Jan knows his father to be a pathological liar. Arriving on his aged grandparents doorstep at lunch time, presumed dead Klein Jan gives his grandfather the shock of a life time. Grannie phones her daughter: "Guess who is come to lunch today."
An free tidbit from The Return, the final book in Bernard Preston's trilogy, A Family Affair. Enjoy. Setting the honeytrap.
The
trilogy will set you back just 99c each on your kindle or smartphone.
If you are enjoying this site, then you'll love A Family Affair. Promise,
write and tell if you find it boring, or in poor taste.
SLOW FOOD, MADE FAST?
I regret not. This mutton recipe takes a lot longer than bbq mutton, but I promise you it tastes and is a lot better, and you'll live a lot longer too. In fact, I absolutely guarantee that by the time you've made this curried mutton, and the salad and mushrooms, your cholesterol will be lower than when you started.
ASIDE: Read the medical stuff about cholesterol with a slightly cynical, jaundiced eye. Our forebears ate plenty of cholesterol rich food, and heart disease was virtually unheard of - literally - until 100 years ago. The spoke in the wheel isn't cholesterol, you can't live without saturated fat, your hormones are all made of cholesterol, but our life style.
Rush and hurry are not of the Devil.
They are the very Devil. But I promise you your Gran and Gramps did not just eat meat and potatoes. They may have lived in the days of B&W television, but they certainly ate from a full colour menu. They enjoyed a well rounded diet full of fruit and veg to go with their butter and red meat. Did your grandparents also live longer than your parents?
IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS
What is Mutton ?
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