So what gives here - lamb thread

[zinfamous]

Nope! American lamb is the superior product. It costs more because a lot more of it goes to restaurants. Australian/NZ lamb is good, but any chef or restauranteur will tell you it's inferior to the American product.

Much like any honest French chef will tell you American beef is prized over there.

yeah, my understanding is that it's superior, but mostly b/c it's local here? Is there something about the lamb that when you compare fresh, USA is actually better than NZ/AU? I always thought that it was a distribution issue.

 

[vbuggy]

Not really. Lamb is not industrially raised like chicken or a lot of cattle.

That, and it's hard to pry the NZ farmers away from their girlfriends :whiste:

 

[Ichinisan]

Lamb always tastes rotten to me. I just cant eat it anymore.

 

[sjwaste]

yeah, my understanding is that it's superior, but mostly b/c it's local here? Is there something about the lamb that when you compare fresh, USA is actually better than NZ/AU? I always thought that it was a distribution issue.

With lamb, I'm really not sure to be honest. I'll ask someone who knows the next time that I see him.

 

[zinfamous]

With lamb, I'm really not sure to be honest. I'll ask someone who knows the next time that I see him.

I saw Alton Brown talk about it recently--I think it was a meatstick (eh, you know, kebab show), And he suggested choosing USA lamb over the imported, simply because it was always fresher, of course. And, iirc, the thickness of the meat was only that way simply because it wasn't transported frozen. Perhaps we treat the lambs differently, I don't know...but he didn't seem to go into any inherent quality differences (Wagyu cattle vs the others, for example) between the animals and prep, just that the freshness and higher quality is due to locality, and is generally cheaper.

:\

 

[sjwaste]

I saw Alton Brown talk about it recently--I think it was a meatstick (eh, you know, kebab show), And he suggested choosing USA lamb over the imported, simply because it was always fresher, of course. And, iirc, the thickness of the meat was only that way simply because it wasn't transported frozen. Perhaps we treat the lambs differently, I don't know...but he didn't seem to go into any inherent quality differences (Wagyu cattle vs the others, for example) between the animals and prep, just that the freshness and higher quality is due to locality, and is generally cheaper.

:\

I'd believe it, but given how long the vac-packed primals and sub-primals last, I'd almost wonder if they have to freeze it to ship it here. Hell, now that they're selling vac-packed "cuts" of beef, check out those expiration dates. That stuff lasts a month, easy.

Also that's a great episode of Good Eats.

I would suspect we raise them differently, and that the animals themselves are slightly different too. Just a guess though. Kind of how the rest of the world loves American corn-fed beef. That is a total guess, though.