Lamb Sausage

[Subdeacon Joe]

I made a version of this from a lamb shoulder roast that was as much bone as meat, wasn't worth roasting.

 

 

Spicy Lamb Sausage

 

· 3 pounds ground lamb, or a mixture of half lamb and half beef or veal

· 2 teaspoons toasted cumin seeds

· 2 teaspoons toasted coriander seeds

· 1 teaspoon black peppercorns

· 6 allspice berries

· 2 teaspoons salt, more as needed

· ½ teaspoon cayenne

· Pinch cinnamon

· 4 tablespoons mild paprika

· 8 large garlic cloves, smashed to a paste

 

To make the sausage, put ground lamb in a mixing bowl. Using a spice mill or mortar and pestle, grind cumin, coriander, black pepper and allspice. Add to lamb, along with salt, cayenne, cinnamon, paprika and garlic. Mix well with hands to incorporate. Fry a little piece of the mixture in a small skillet. Taste for seasoning and adjust salt if necessary. Mix again and refrigerate at least 2 hours or, preferably, overnight. Form mixture into 24 two-ounce patties.

 

After I had trimmed up the lamb - deboned and fat, silver skin, and gristle removed, I had about 2 1/2 pounds of meat, so I added some salt pork (very lean salt pork).

Chopped it into about 1 inch pieces, put on most of the seasoning and ran it through our food processor until it was very finely chopped, a little finer than store bought hamburger. I used ground spices rather than grinding my own, and thought "FOUR tablespoons of paprika???" so I cut that back to a rounded one tablespoon. I also used Aleppo Pepper rather than cayenne.

 

Very tasty. Next time I might cut back on the garlic a bit, too. Although the cloves I used were a bit on the large side.

 

 

ADDED:

The roast had been sliced most of the way through into shoulder chops, then tied. I took the bones which had some meat on them still, seasoned them well with salt and pepper, put them in a zip lock type bag and added about a cup of Gallo Family Moscato. Put the bag in the fridge, turning is several times for 2 days. Then put them on a rack over a rimmed pan and roasted them at 375 for about half an hour. Had them for lunch Monday. Fantastic.

Edited January 5, 2017 by Subdeacon Joe

[Grumpy Old Man]

Never et lamb. Dad raised sheep and never had one butchered. One uncle swears by it. As a former meat cutter at Kroger, I never saw much meat for the price. Didn't sell well at our store.

[El Hombre Sin Nombre]

Sounds great. I love lamb sausage. My hierarchy of tasty meats goes something like Deer, Elk, Buffalo, Lamb........

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

I never see mutton sold. I suppose that would be closer to sheep country.

[Subdeacon Joe]

Never et lamb. Dad raised sheep and never had one butchered. One uncle swears by it. As a former meat cutter at Kroger, I never saw much meat for the price. Didn't sell well at our store.

 

 

It does tend to be a bit pricey, although with the price of beef now, and even pork, lamb isn't as unreasonable as it used to be.

 

This was about $2.50 a pound on special, so using it for sausage is a no-brainer. This chain has "flash sales" from time to time, tri-tip at $2.50, pork loin chops at $2, the lamb. I stock up some, vac-pack and freeze it. The tri-tip usually gets turned into ground beef.

 

[Subdeacon Joe]

I never see mutton sold. I suppose that would be closer to sheep country.

 

Which is a shame because it is pretty darned good.

 

Interesting thing about mutton v. lamb is that now people sneer at mutton as "too strong." I've seen cookbooks from the 1800s that say that mutton is preferred over lamb because lamb is too mild, although it is good to feed to invalids and people with weak constitutions.

 

Goat is pretty good, too. Marinate it in something like Italian salad dressing and grill it (or roast it).

 

[El Hombre Sin Nombre]

 

 

It does tend to be a bit pricey, although with the price of beef now, and even pork, lamb isn't as unreasonable as it used to be.

 

This was about $2.50 a pound on special, so using it for sausage is a no-brainer. This chain has "flash sales" from time to time, tri-tip at $2.50, pork loin chops at $2, the lamb. I stock up some, vac-pack and freeze it. The tri-tip usually gets turned into ground beef.

 

My father tells me that when he was a kid they ate a lot of lamb because beef and pork cost more. That was probably before the days of big agribusiness. I know when I was a kid we ate deer and elk almost exclusively because that was even cheaper than all the other meat, just costing a tag, an arrow, and some leg work

[Rex M Rugers #6621]

I never see mutton sold. I suppose that would be closer to sheep country.

Maybe not in some areas. When I was a kid growing up in West Texas , there were more sheep ranchers than anything else. And I never heard of anybody in that era eating sheep. But , they were raising wool sheep , not so much the butchering breeds.

I have tried it since being grown , personally think it is disgusting.

Rex