When you buy a portion of a locally-raised lamb, you'll win applause from The Food Guys, who encourage meat-eaters to avoid eating animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations. Jon Jackson and Greg Patent think of ground lamb as "user-friendly," and they've got a list of easy-to-make dishes to back up the opinion.
1. Treat lamb like ground beef: brown it in a skillet with olive oil, onion, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper, combine it with hot rice, and serve with chutney.
2. Shape ground lamb and crumbled feta cheese into patties, combining it with oregano or rosemary, salt and pepper. Grill or pan-sauté it and serve with a tomato sauce, or in a bun.
3. Make pasta sauce by browning ground lamb in a skillet with onion and garlic. Season the meat with salt, pepper, dried oregano, fresh parsley, anchovies, capers, a bit of wine, cooked mushrooms and canned tomatoes. Simmer for thirty to forty minutes, until the flavors combine.
4. Substitute ground lamb for the ground beef in meatloaf.
5. Make ground lamb meatballs, cook them at 400 degrees F, and cook them into a stew with root vegetables like turnips and potatoes.
6. Mix ground lamb with some cream cheese as a binder and use the mixture as a filling for meat pies, like empenadas.
"I don't suppose many people in Butte are thinking of putting lamb into a pastie, but why not?."
(Broadcast: "The Food Guys," 10/25/15 and 10/29/15. Listen weekly on the radio at 11:50 a.m. Sundays and again at 4:54 p.m. Thursdays, or via podcast.)