ASSINIBOIA, Sask. – Consumer perceptions of a muttony past and woolly ignorance in the present is keeping lamb out of shoppers’ baskets, says a Moose Jaw cooking instructor.
By showing people how to cut and cook lamb, the sheep industry might be able to get itself a bigger piece of the grocery pie, Wayne Heshka said after a cooking demonstration at the Grasslands Sheep Exhibition.
“Not enough people know how to prepare it and the old fellows are scared away because they remember the taste” of what was called lamb during the Second World War, he said.
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Ignorance about cooking and preparing lamb developed after the war, Heshka said. The meat was popular before 1939 but wartime meant that “they slaughtered anything, from old mutton to goats” and called it lamb.
People who had to eat this “tallowy tasting, sticky goo” were permanently put off lamb and it ceased to be a regular Canadian food.
Now Canadian sheep producers provide high quality, tasty lamb, but sales are low and the meat has not made its way back to the
average plate.
It’s partly because of wartime memories, but more probably comes from the average Canadian’s complete ignorance of what to do with a piece of lamb.
At the exhibition Heshka showed an enthusiastic crowd how to cut a carcass into many sorts of roasts, racks and chops.
Frequent questions proved that all sheep producers aren’t masters of lamb carcass cutting. And many seemed pleasantly surprised by the dishes Heshka prepared: A honey-garlic lamb stir-fry, a pasta-spinach soup with lamb-pork meatballs and a bean-macaroni soup with sauteed lamb. As sheep producers chowed down on the delicacies, many admitted they had never seen lamb used for anything other than roasts or chops.
“These people know everything there is to be known about raising sheep and lamb, but as far as getting it to the table, they are not as aware,” Heshka said.
And if sheep producers don’t have a great grasp of it, you can bet the average consumer has even less, he added.
Getting more recipes into consumer hands and giving public cooking demonstrations might be a way to boost lamb sales, said Heshka.
