Modified Mutton "Biryani"

This is a sort-of approximation of a real biryani which is modified for cooks who are lazy time sensitive and who don’t necessarily have all of the ingredients on hand for a traditional biryani.

What is “Mutton”?

While the definitions change depending on where you are, in general “mutton” refers to meat from a sheep that is 2 years of age or older, meaning it has gone through at least one breeding cycle. “Lamb” is generally from a sheep that is around a year old or younger, and does not yet have its permanent incisors. The term for a sheep that is mature but between 1 and 2 years of age (and thus has likely not been through a breeding cycle) is a “hogget”. There is a very wide variation in grass-fed lamb or mutton, based on whether the animal was standing in lush pastures eating a salad bar of grasses and hay, or whether it was walking miles each day over scrub land looking for grass to eat. Neither of these methods of raising sheep is “better”, but if you’ve only tried range-raised lamb (or mutton) and it wasn’t to your taste, try some lamb from a local farmer who sees the animals every day instead of turning them loose on open range for the season.

Source: Anchor Ranch Farm

Materials

2 pounds of boneless mutton stew meat

2 cups of basmati rice

2-4 yellow or sweet onions (depending on size), sliced thin

plain yogurt, or milk

lemon juice

powdered or fresh ginger

minced garlic or garlic powder (not salt!)

butter

Ghee or lard (real lard, not the packaged stuff full of preservatives)

fresh cilantro, chopped

spices: salt, black pepper, nutmeg, mace (or more nutmeg), dried or fresh mint, cinnamon (stick and ground), cloves (whole), cardamom (pod or ground), ground cumin, ground coriander, bay leaves, turmeric.

You need the salt, nutmeg, cardamom of some form, and cinnamon. Cloves are a nice to have. For the rest, if you have to you could substitute a basic curry powder. Make sure your curry powder is salt-free or make sure you balance the curry and any extra salt you add. If you happen to have garam masala, use that.

A big heavy pot with a lid

Aluminum foil

Another pot

Optional: dried raisins or craisins, nuts, prunes, something like that

Method

Marinade the Mutton

First, marinate the mutton in plain yogurt mixed with ginger and garlic powder for a few hours, or overnight if you can. If you don’t have plain yogurt, make a mix of milk (we always use local raw milk), a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, some salt, and powdered ginger and garlic, just enough to cover all of the mutton. You could grate fresh ginger instead of the powder, if you have it, and you could use minced fresh or dried garlic. Here is a photo of the mutton in the marinade:

Carmelize the Onions

Put some lard (or ghee) in the bottom of your big heavy pot and put it on medium heat. Add salt and the sliced onion and carmelize, stirring occasionally. How much salt depends on what you want it to taste like. The browner the onions get, the more flavor they will have, but the closer you get to burning them. If you have other things to do besides watch onions cook, just go until they have some brown bits in them, like the photo below.

Once the onions are sufficiently carmelized, add one cinnamon stick, a few cloves, dried or fresh mint (if you have it), 3-5 cardamom pods or a few pinches of ground cardamom, 2-3 bay leaves (if you have them), a few pinches of mace (if you have it, otherwise use extra nutmeg), and either a garam masala mix OR about half a nutmeg (ground), ground black pepper, several shakes of ground cumin and of ground coriander, and several shakes of cinnamon. If you want, add a bit of chili powder. Turn up the heat and cook and stir the onions with the spices for about another minute. The most important flavors here are the carmelized onion, the cardamom, nutmeg or mace, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, and cloves. I don’t like giving spice measurements because it depends on how strong you like the flavors and how old your spices are. Try roughly equal parts cumin and coriander, slightly more than that of cinnamon, even more than that of cardamom, and a whole heck of a lot of nutmeg, maybe 50:50 with mace if you have it. As mentioned, you could substitute out some of these for a curry powder mix if that is all you have, just read the ingredients.

Simmer the Mutton Until Tender

Add in the mutton along with its marinade. Add chopped cilantro, or parsley if you don’t like cilantro, or some other green herb that reminds you of cilantro or parsley (we used papalo). Stir everything to combine. Add about 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Add extra salt to taste. I like to add chicken bouillon, not really for the weird stuff and the chicken flavor but for the MSG. I know, OMG, I thought you were about natural food, MSG is extracted from….seaweed, and L-glutamic acid is in a whole bunch of different kinds of natural foods. Hey, you do you, leave it out if you don’t like it. If you cooked the onions in lard and not ghee, consider adding a couple tablespoons of butter, for flavor. If you cooked the onions in some kind of hydrogenated vegetable oil, pack up your backpack and go to the principal’s office right now.

Turn the heat down, put the lid on, and simmer the mutton for several hours, stirring occasionally until it is tender. The cooking liquid should be bubbling but not popping boiling hot bubbles in your face. When done, you should be able to cut a piece of mutton in half with a wooden spatula. If the meat is not that tender, keep cooking, and add more liquid if necessary.

Prep the Rice

Meanwhile, rinse your rice (most rice has arsenic in it — which is probably not a big deal if you have a healthy immune system and you rinse it), then soak the rice in a pot of water, at least twice as much water as rice. (You can change out the water before cooking if you’re that kind of person.) When the mutton is close to tender, add to the rice pot a few tablespoons of butter, a pinch of salt (if to your taste), a jigger of lemon juice, some extra cardamom (pods or ground), and a healthy dose of turmeric. You can do without the turmeric if you want, it’s mostly to color the rice yellow, because saffron is really, really, really expensive. Bring the rice mixture to a rolling boil for just 2 minutes. Drain the rice (a mesh strainer is helpful but not strictly necessary.) Yes, you are wasting most of the flavorings since you only boiled the rice for 2 minutes. You could save the liquid and use it later as a base to cook another batch of rice.

Finish the Mutton, Steam the Rice

Take the lid off the mutton and crank up the heat, stirring while you reduce the cooking liquid until it’s still there but you can see the mutton above the top of the liquid. It’s better to err on the side of a little extra broth so you make sure there is enough liquid to finish steaming the rice. Then reduce the heat to low. Spread the parboiled rice evenly over the top of the mutton. Decorate (optionally) by sprinkling something like dried cranberries over the top.

Cover the cooking pot tightly. One way to do this is to seal it with aluminum foil and then put the lid on top of that. Steam the rice like this for around 30 minutes before checking to see if the rice is done.

Make a Raita

When the rice is steamed the biryani is done. It is best served with some kind of a raita, such as plain yogurt mixed with minced cucumber and chopped, fresh mint. By which I mean, ignore complicated raita recipes and chop up half a cucumber and a handful of mint, then mix it into a cup or so of plain yogurt.

Remember to take out the bay leaves and whole spices or at least warn people to watch out for them. Or don’t.

Source: Anchor Ranch Farm

How I pan sear lamb loin chops

This is so easy it doesn’t really require a recipe.

Bring the chops to room temperature and season them with salt and pepper on both sides. Do this at least an hour before cooking. You want time for the salt to soak into the meat so you don’t just have a salty crust on the outside. A lot of chefs recommend using koshering salt for meat because the flakes make it easy to use. I stopped using koshering salt because my understanding is that it is quite pure. That sounds good for the intended purpose, but our bodies require a lot of other trace minerals besides salt. So we use a colored mineral salt (the natural color comes from other trace minerals which are mixed into the sodium chloride deposits where it is found.) Sea salt would also work. Anyways, use whatever salt you like.

When you are ready to cook the chops, bring a cast iron skillet to medium-high heat with a couple tablespoons of homemade cooking lard in it. Grass fed lamb chops have a fat cap but not much marbling so bringing extra fat to the pan helps. Natural lard works well with the lamb flavor. You want a good coating of melted lard on the bottom of the pan but it shouldn’t be sloshing: we’re searing with extra cooking fat, not frying.

Once the lard is melted and hot but not smoking, sear the chops on one side for about 2 minutes until they start to brown on that side. If this takes longer than 2 minutes turn up the heat. Flip the chops over and after a minute or so your pan is probably starting to get too hot, so turn the heat down to medium-low and let the heated cast iron continue to cook your chops. You want the lard popping though, so adjust heat as needed. After the 2nd side has browned, turn the chops onto their edge so that the fat cap starts to brown and render in the cooking lard. After that browns a bit flip the chops on to the other edge (this is where the T-bone is exposed) and sear that for 20 seconds or so.

I use a probe thermometer to check doneness. However, most thermometers aren’t all that accurate, so you kind of have to know what works with your setup. Lamb is medium at 140F and medium-rare at 130F, but my probe thermometer will read 140F when the meat is still bloody. Regardless, the meat should still have some give, some squishyness to it, when you remove the chops from the pan. The standard is to cook lamb to medium, but personally I think that is too much. I think our lamb chops are best medium-rare, and I like to err on the side of more rare and pull the chops off the heat a bit early to make sure the inside is still a nice pinkish red. I definitely recommend trying grass fed lamb chops the rare side of medium rare if you haven’t yet.

After you remove the chops from the pan, drizzle the lamb-flavored lard from the skillet over the chops. Then let them rest about 10 minutes before serving and eating. If you like the flavor of lamb, I think you will enjoy these.

"Brandenburg" Lamb with Green Beans

This is simple and very tasty. This amount will make enough for several family dinners.

Materials

A large, heavy pot would be best, with a lid

4 tablespoons of salted butter (plus see method)

2 yellow onions, medium-to-large

2 pounds of lamb (tougher cuts like a blade steak work well)

salt and pepper (to taste)

summer savory, fresh or dried, or a mix of thyme and sage (to taste)

2 cups homemade beef stock (or lamb stock if you have it)

2 pounds of fresh green beans

About 20 small potatoes less than 2 inches diameter (or larger potatoes cut in halves or quarters)

Method

Dice the lamb into approximately 1-inch square pieces. Clean and cut the green beans into approximately 2-inch long pieces. Peel the potatoes if you like, and cut into 2-inch pieces or smaller. Peel and cut the onions in half and slice them into medium-thin slices.

Heat the butter in the pot on medium-high heat. Either use clarified butter, or mix in a fat with a higher smoke point to prevent the butter from burning. Beef tallow works well. Brown the lamb in the butter on medium-high heat. Stir frequently to make sure all sides of the lamb pieces get browned. You don’t need a dark brown sear like on steak, just get the Maillard reaction started to add that extra flavor.

Keep the lamb on high heat and add the sliced onions and the red wine. Stir in some salt and pepper and some of your herbs. (You can add more seasoning later if necessary.) If you don’t have summer savory, use a mix of thyme and sage to approximate the flavor. Cook for another minute or two to let the alcohol in the wine cook off.

Add the stock just until the liquid barely covers the lamb and onions. 2 cups will likely be more than enough, so only use the amount of stock needed and reserve the rest for some other dish. Cover the dish with the lid and turn the heat down to low.

Braise for one to two hours until the lamb is completely tender. Taste the braising liquid and add extra seasoning if necessary, this may depend on whether or not your stock was seasoned. Add in the green beans and potatoes, mix well, and put the lid back on. Cook another 20 minutes or until the potatoes are done.

This dish is excellent regardless, but I think it is best when the beans are not overcooked and provide a green “pop” of color and fresh flavor. The problem with using (defrosted) frozen beans is that they would cook too quickly. If using frozen beans, a better choice might be to cook the beans separately and then mix in at the end. They won’t benefit from cooking in the braising liquid but at least won’t become overcooked.

For a low carb version of this dish you could leave out the potatoes, though without the potato starch mixed into the braising liquid the end result will be a bit watery and won’t taste quite as good.