How to Butcher an Entire Lamb: Every Cut of Meat Explained | Handcrafted | Bon Appetit

My name is Justin Williams, I'm a

butcher

at Harlem Shambles and today we're

butcher

ing all of our

lamb

into all the cuts you'd normally see in a butcher's case. First, let's remove the neck. a cut that would be used for stews or broths, not necessarily to be used alone, but it very well may be, you can bone the

entire

neck, wrap it with some herbs and make a very good roast, but also if making any type of super broth, The neck is probably one of the first places I go to get as much flavor and bang for my buck.

Next, we'll remove the shoulder section the way we're doing it here. is to find the fifth and sixth ribs, which is where we want to define the shoulder from the ribs. This animal weighs about 50 pounds and we can expect about 100 percent performance since here we are working with the

entire

animal,

every

detail. Animal lands are anything that's overly unpleasant that you can put to good use, be it bones, excess fat, any

meat

trimmed from a cut that you then want to tie up or turn into a chop of some kind next. Let's focus on the rib section by counting how many ribs we have in the

lamb

first, the lamb can grow to have eight ribs in the rib section or nine ribs.

This time we were lucky so someone is going to get a rack with nine ribs, the rib section is typically what a rib would look like on a cow, you get your rack of lamb, you can also get some cuts that you don't typically see in many cases from butchers, such as lamb breast. which is great for attaching to a roast, you also get the ribs which you don't see much in the lamb, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised the next thing I'm going to do is remove the kidneys and the fat from the kidneys. of the back or the saddle because if it were a horse, that's where you would sit and set them aside, save them for that kidney pie you're trying to make or a pie crust with that lamb fat here I'm looking where the top of the sirloin bone is in relation to the back of the saddle, I find that I know I want to cut as close to that mister as possible so that my saddle section is as large as I can and then after going all the way through the bone, I finished my cut on the other side and then I should have my saddle full and complete, so these are the primary cuts that you'll get from a Lam.

First you have the neck, shoulders and rib. the chair the kidneys and the fat from the kidneys and the legs next I'm going to break the shoulder the first thing I'm going to do is divide the shoulders in half and treat them independently and first we'll do that by sawing right through the middle of the spine to then have two equal halves, so now that the shoulder is divided, I will remove one of the legs so we can make a boneless roast shoulder, the leg can be treated as its own cut. then it can be braised, it can go into soup, anything that is low and slow with a moderate amount of moisture, then you can end up with a very nice tender, braised cut of

meat

.

Lamb is different in the way it has a specific flavor profile. which lends itself to different applications than what you would normally find in beef, pork and chicken, mainly because unsaturated fats are very common in the animal, which then oxidize and give off a kind of unfair gamey flavor, even more so in foreign lambs and you would see an American Lamb, but at the same time it opens up a completely different profile to meat cooking in general, so now what we are doing is exposing the meat from the shoulder bone and writing a seam that basically separates the breast and the rest of the shoulder and we're also going to trim away some of the unnecessary fat and fascia just to get

every

thing nice and evenly shaped, so now we're going around and under the shoulder blade trying to keep that plank and that tender scotch lamb nice and intact to preserve as much roast meat as possible, it is best to work around the bone and just make sure the tip of the knife stays on them, being very shallow and making very precise cuts and having the animal work at around you, not so much, you work around the animal, moving the cut constantly definitely helps in this case, so now we are going to make a little more tunnel, since there is a small pocket where the shoulder blade then goes. on the arm bone, all you need to do is twist a little fast and you can hold them both to remove the bone from the blade.

Now we're going to finish excavating the rest of the arm bone right there, so just a few more careful cuts on the inside of the shoulder meat and then we should be able to do a little twist and turn quickly and just pull it out and then go ahead and Start cutting out some of the unwanted parts, like this little one. seal that the USDA puts on lambs, which is actually cranberry juice that they use to seal them so they're perfectly edible, but it doesn't always have the best appearance and can end up coloring the final product and then we'll start tying the roast.

To tie it is always best to start in the center and define the tension of the roll you are trying to achieve and then work lightly from one end to the other and then fill in the gaps as you go. I would try the boneless shoulder. Roast like dry roast, salt, pepper, brown quickly on all sides, put it in a pan with aromatics and herbs and then cook until half round on the inside, deglaze the pan with ginger and beer and you have a wonderful dinner. Here are the breakdown cuts on the shoulder we will go back to the other side of the shoulder a little later on the band saw to make round bone chops, leaf bone chops and remove the other four legs then I will break the rib section to break the ribs we are going to start by removing the loin or bell bone with the saw what this does is allow us to expose the meat of the rack of lamb and also separate the ribs and breasts from that central bone cutting the lamb A Sometimes it is difficult because you have a good amount of fat on the outside, which can become a little slippery and, at the same time, you do not have the weight of the animal, which is very heavy and which at that moment requires constant and complete movements. which you have to use with a knife or a saw, so now what we're going to do is define where the rack of lamb will end and where the ribs will start, you definitely have the option between using a band saw or a hand saw.

Since there are small, brittle bones, you will be able to preserve the integrity and have a slightly cleaner cut with the band saw, but here at Shambles we try to do everything with the old school bass and just like with the rest of the animal a Once I go through the bone, I will stop and then switch to a knife to finish my cut. I used that scimitar knife because it has a nice wide spine that gives it enough strength to cut through heavier meats and if I really needed to I could just hit the spine and finish off the rest of the bone, the ribs are definitely the hardest part. praised and popular of lamb, which in their own right are the big little bites of that perfect lamb flavor that people look for so much and that here they simply are.

With great care and making long, well thought out strokes with the hand saw, you can sort the bones without breaking or splintering, which would end up being an adverse outcome, so now we are separating the spare. rib tips from the actual ribs we are going to make st. Louis style just means it's a nice rectangular rack of ribs and we're going to spread the ribs apart, there's a good amount of space between them so I'm just lining everything up making sure it's nice and straight, making sure all the ribs are exactly even. It is very important to ensure that no one receives an overcooked prime rib while everyone else enjoys a succulent, boneless prime rib.

Nice, even cuts help make it easier to get everything exactly right. Likewise, with this side of the ribs, what we're really going to do is go under all those little ribs and cut the breast off the ribs. This is similar to what you would see on a pig as a belly. but since lamb is not that big of an animal you don't get that big of a result, but the flavor you get from it is its result within itself, with this you can cure it and make some bacon out of it. Also stuff it and tie it like a roast.

You can tie the breasts around a leaner part of the animal if you think it doesn't have enough fat to support it and keep it moist, so now we're going to French-style a rib of French lamb by removing the meat from the end of the bones. to expose the bone and give it a really nice look. Nice display here. I'm removing a rest of the shoulder blade. Also, after touching the grill, there will be a tendon running down. the top of the column should also be removed, it just doesn't have any added benefit, it doesn't break down when you cook it, so it's best to leave it out completely now what we're doing here is scoring in the middle. each bone about an inch down just so we can define where the end of our french will be.

What helps a lot is to make sure you get through the membrane, then you can peel it along the side of the bones and then when you're ready with your clean paper towel, you can peel the entire section of meat that you scored on both sides and remove it completely. and then you should come out with a rack of French lamb bones clean and perfect, they are the meat. that comes off after french is definitely great to use in your grinds or cuts, it has a good amount of fat and there is also a good amount of meat again, we are trying to work with zero waste trying to get as many as are usable. piece of meat so now with the other side of the grill we are going to make the lamb Wasat which is basically the entire rack of lamb boned and rolled on itself just like with the first we have a little bit of shoulder that we have to pass, so we're going to cut around that and then what we're going to do is get right under the ribs and just like we were with the shoulder very close to the bone, preserving as much meat as possible, making sure that you get a good sized roast. considerable to feed everyone who goes to the table, we will find our little tendon there and we will take it out like the other one and then we will roll it up from the meat side.

Then we go ahead and make sure everything is secure by tying up the roast. Here's our breakdown of the rib section. Next, we will address the spine section of the limb. The first thing we will do is remove part of the. leftover glands and fashion that come from where the kidneys used to be, so we're going to give it an internal shape that will definitely give you a nice meaty looking roast, the tenderloin can end up in a lot of different things that you can prepare. making double chops, which is basically one side cut from the entire front and you can cut them in half to get little tenderloin porterhouses.

You can also debone the entire spine of the lamb and once again tie it, roast it and do a lot of very interesting things, spring lambs tend to be a little bigger and will give you more meat and fat, more loin chops, so depending on what time of year you buy the lamb you could end up with a larger lamb or a smaller lamb which will then determine how much yield you would get from it so here is the breakdown of the loin. Later we're going to take the spine to the band saw and see what kind of cuts we can make here now.

We're going to tackle the legs, so the first thing we want to do with the legs is separate them and treat them individually, so what I'm going to do is make a small incision in the center of the legs just to separate the meat and show me. where the center of the hip bone is, with a couple of strokes with a knife we ​​are going to separate the lower part of the hip and then begin to cut the sirloin and the rest of the leg from that hip. We're going to start peeling a leg away from the curved bones at that hip width where you basically want to stay on the edge to make sure you keep as much meat as possible in the cut and I like to do a little one lines up from the back of the spine to where the tail is so I can designate where one leg ends and the other begins, so I'm working around each little curved bone trying to keep all the meat on the leg and the sirloin itself and there you have a side of leg completely removed.

Whole animal butchery is different in the way that you actually have two chances when working with the whole animal, so a leg of lamb can be turned into stew and skewered and stirred. -frying, while it can otherwise be turned into roasting, you can do some really amazing things and have a wide range of options. Next, we'll take a look at the leg and find the gap between the leg and the leg itself. Making a small incision againand here I'm using gravity by bending the heaviest part of the leg away from me and holding the leg which then tends to expose exactly where I'm cutting, so here we're going to trim.

Remove some of the internal fat and also some glands that might interfere with tying a roast, so there is a fairly large shank on the leg that definitely needs to be removed before you start cooking, it just won't give us any nutritional benefit. of value to then expose the femur bone. We start by making a nice long cut on one side of the bone and then slowly begin to work down and around the edge of the femur bone and then free it from the inside of the leg. you're going to be left with the ball joint on the bottom that needs to come off and now we're just going to trim away some of the fat that may not contribute to the particular cut that we're making, but definitely needs to be saved and used for any type of routine or any other application of fat you want. might have and then we're going to go and trim some offences outside just to give our lamb a nice, lean look.

Killing tends to be more of a reductive process, like someone who works on ice sculptures would have a big block. and then when you remove them they form something beautiful so you try to remove as little as possible but you also know when it is necessary to remove something to give you the best possible result so now with the other leg we are going to take a slightly different approach, we are still going to remove the cane Again, we're also going to remove anything that's unnecessary, fat, any type of glands, what we're going to do differently with this is instead of keeping all the muscles intact to then form a roast, we're going to separate the muscles against each other so you can then judge which muscles will be used for what purpose, whether it be a stir-fry stew or any particular type of roast or small cut. which we would like to use a leaner muscle for, so we're going to trim a little bit that way and remove anything that might be intrusive to what we're trying to do with this specific lamb, so after the fat goes away, It leaves our seams exposed, so you take a seam and start following it here.

It's a round bottom that's great for our skewers or our stew. Plus, if you cut against the grain you'll get that really good stir-fry you're looking for. Also, I'm basically working around the lamb and removing the separate parts, like the piece of fillet that goes through the sirloin mm, which is considered the filet mignon of the lamb, it's very tender, so next I'll remove the top. so go slow follow a seam and eventually the muscle will come off the rest of the leg so next i will separate the rest of the large muscles from the femur and remove the bone and then we can start cleaning. some of these main muscles and putting them into their respective applications, so now I'm going to take this cut and trim away any silver skin and I'm going to cut it into more manageable sections and we're going to turn this piece into the stew, so we're going to make some chunks Good sized bonito that will break down, get a little smaller once cooked low and slow, and end up with a very nice meaty stew that falls apart after you've cleaned all the mussels. and exposed, it's great to take a look at the striations of the muscle and see which direction the muscle is facing.

If you're sautéing, you'll definitely want to cut against the striations to get a small grain at the end. What it will do on the day is contribute to the tenderness and make it cook a little easier. The muscle fibers will end up being shorter when you cut against the grain rather than longer, so it's less work for your teeth to have to chew on the leg. Lamb is the leanest cut you can get, so it won't have as much fat as any other part, which means it has a lot of muscles working quite hard, so these are cuts you would normally use. in a stew or stew, something that is cooked over low heat for a long period of time that allows the meat to become very tender and fall off the bone.

I like to think about butchery from a cook's perspective because at the end of the day some would take everything we cut for them and then they had to make a meal out of it, so once you think about what this is going to look like after it's cooked, it makes my job much easier. Go into so much detail and make sure that even without me being there, the end results of what a customer will do with it will be fabulous, so here's the breakdown of the leg of lamb. Next, we'll head to the band saw and cut the neck, shoulder and loin so that the neck on the band saw allows us again into smaller, more manageable pieces, easier to place in a pot, if not you have a band saw with a steady hand, you can definitely use a hand saw or the big one. enough pot to fit the entire neck and just give it enough time to completely break down.

The most important tip is to keep everything stable and make sure everything comes out even because even the cuts cook at exactly the same time as everything around them. if you cut from one side of the shoulder you will get brown bone in chops and if you turn the shoulder 45 degrees you will get the bone in shoulder chops so we will cut them about an inch thick which will give you a nice steak with some good bones that you can end up chewing at the end of the meal. We also cut the loin to about an inch to get nice, thick fillets.

It's like a steak in that it doesn't have the marbling. The meat, all the fat will be on the outside, so a good way to cook it in a pan would be to turn it over and get a good portion of the fat to get a nice crispy outer layer, but also remember that it will keep it moist, so what spray works great too. The most important thing to remember is to make sure each cut comes out straight and even clean off any bone dust that will accumulate on the cut as you make it. Prepared lamb chops should be treated more or less like a steak to try to get the right internal temperature that you're looking for to try to get that nice sear that you're looking for in the exterior flavor combinations and then start to open up quite a bit.

Adding some blue cheese really amps up that funk vibe you get from lamb. You can also use a wide variety of sauces to finish a stew and herbs are also a great addition, the antioxidants and herbs work against them. the oxidation of the saturated fats inside that lamb shoulder and these are all the cuts that we're going to get from the band saw with all the trimmings that we had left over from breaking down all the lamb, we're going to grind it up and then we're going to make more sausages for guests to having our mirga mixed and ready to go and we're basically stuffing our sausage stuffer making sure we don't have any air holes or pockets that could result in someone's sausage.

They burst on them when they're cooking, so after our sausage stuffer is nice and full, we're going to start equalizing our sausage and then we're going to put the casing into the horn, it's best to run a little bit of water through the casing to make Make sure everything is nice and lubricated and you don't have any problems with the casing getting caught, so we're going to use lamb casing, which is the small intestines of the lamb. It is quite complicated to work with, but with a little practice. With a steady hand you shouldn't have any problems, making sure everything is cold is one of the most important parts when making a sausage, the hotter the sausage gets it becomes a food safety issue, but then the fats start to stain and then not It doesn't have the separation between the meat and the fat that then helps cook the sausage when heat is applied and that's a complete Merguez sausage and finally, here are all the cuts that you would normally see in the display case of the butcher in its entirety. lamb