mikedilger on Nostr: I just butchered the shoulder of a lamb tonight trying to follow the standard way of ...
I just butchered the shoulder of a lamb tonight trying to follow the standard way of doing it by wathcing youtube videos on it. I had 2 lambs hanging, now I have about 1 1/2 lambs hanging. What I wanted to note down is that doing it the standard butcher shop way is kinda dumb, it is a hell of a lot more work than the techniques I kinda worked out for myself over the years. All the bone sawing is nuts. If you have a band saw it's probably a good method, but if you are using a hand saw it's stupid to try to make the official standard butcher shop cuts because you will be putting in a lot of work and I fail to see the benefit of it.
What I have always done in the past is like this:
* Saw off the neck. That part is not different.
* Cut each front leg off of the body by circling around the shoulder cartilage, keeping all that cartilage on the leg piece. Nuckle the leg shank (folded in) by cutting into the knee joint and breaking that joint, sawing where necessary. This is a *long* bone-in roast that might not fit in some people's ovens or roasting pans. In that case you can just cut off the shank entirely and debone the leg entirely and wrap it up like a boneless roast.
* Fliet out the entire back straps as long lean meaty boneless pieces.
* If the chest was not cut in two when evicerating, then cut it in two now.
* Cut both rib sections off, leaving enough ribs on the spine part for what you want to do next. Usually I cut the ribs into two sections just to fit them all into plastic bags.
* The spine part can be band-sawed into "lamb chops" but only if you didn't cut out the back straps. With the back straps gone, I consider the spine part to be waste. Trim any usable meat and toss the spine.
* Cut the legs in half at the tailbone, separating the tailbone triangle piece out. I don't have a use for that tailbone piece so I trim off the useful meat and give it to the dog.
* Back legs are usually kept as giant roasts, with the shank knuckled in. But you can cut steaks/chops off of the thick part on top so it won't be so big, or even dice the whole thing for cubed lamb.
As I watch youtube videos on this, I notice most of these are small young animals, lighter pink colored flesh, small. I usually work with darker fleshed older larger animals.
What I have always done in the past is like this:
* Saw off the neck. That part is not different.
* Cut each front leg off of the body by circling around the shoulder cartilage, keeping all that cartilage on the leg piece. Nuckle the leg shank (folded in) by cutting into the knee joint and breaking that joint, sawing where necessary. This is a *long* bone-in roast that might not fit in some people's ovens or roasting pans. In that case you can just cut off the shank entirely and debone the leg entirely and wrap it up like a boneless roast.
* Fliet out the entire back straps as long lean meaty boneless pieces.
* If the chest was not cut in two when evicerating, then cut it in two now.
* Cut both rib sections off, leaving enough ribs on the spine part for what you want to do next. Usually I cut the ribs into two sections just to fit them all into plastic bags.
* The spine part can be band-sawed into "lamb chops" but only if you didn't cut out the back straps. With the back straps gone, I consider the spine part to be waste. Trim any usable meat and toss the spine.
* Cut the legs in half at the tailbone, separating the tailbone triangle piece out. I don't have a use for that tailbone piece so I trim off the useful meat and give it to the dog.
* Back legs are usually kept as giant roasts, with the shank knuckled in. But you can cut steaks/chops off of the thick part on top so it won't be so big, or even dice the whole thing for cubed lamb.
As I watch youtube videos on this, I notice most of these are small young animals, lighter pink colored flesh, small. I usually work with darker fleshed older larger animals.