There are lamb lovers, lamb haterz, and the lamb agnostic, but even those who find themselves in the lamb lover category probably don’t have much good to say about cold lamb fat. The texture of pork fat at pretty much every temperature is becoming. Hot lamb fat is pretty great, but as soon as it starts to cool, there is this magical terribleness that takes over. It firms up and coats pretty much everything it touches.
I wanted to try to make rillettes which either did not have that texture or worked despite that texture. One way to overcome that texture without subbing in a bunch of pork fat, I thought, may be to add softer cuts of lamb. Brain may have worked, but I thought the tongue might be a reasonable way to soften the texture.
Before starting the rilllettes, I cooked the tongue in beer, stock, mustard seeds, green garlic and bay. Then I let the tongue cool, peeled the tongue and chopped it into cubes. After simmering the chunks of lamb leg, I whipped the meat with the stock, then folded in the cubes of tongue, tasted, salted and retested.
After jarring, chilling and capping the rillettes, I took a taste. Actually, I let the jar come to room temp and scooped the rillettes onto a plate. The downside was that they are not pork rillettes (or duck rillettes or goose rillettes) texture-wise. With the lamb, I chose to limit that lamb fat, so the meat concentration of the rillettes was not the same as the lovely fatty rillettes. Better texture than simply including the lamb fat, but not quite the texture of pork. The softness the tongue adds is an improvement. The upside is the distinctive flavors of lamb in spreadable form is delicious.
Lamb Tongue and Leg Rillettes
- 1 lb. boneless lamb leg
- salt
- pepper
- 1 tbsp. utter
- 1 cooked lamb tongue, peeled and chopped
- 2 onions, minced
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 cup lamb stock
- 1 cup lager
- 1/2 stalk celery
- 3 sprigs thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp. chili flakes
Step one: Cut the lamb into 2 inch pieces and aggressively salt and pepper them. Refrigerate them for 24 hours.
Step two: Heat butter in a enameled cast iron dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook for ten minutes.
Step three: Add the remainder of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Lower heat to low, cover, and cook for three hours.
Step four: Remove celery, thyme, and bay leaves. Move lamb to the bowl of your stand mixer and, with the paddle attachment, shred the meat.
Step five: With mixer still shredding, slowly add broth/fat mixture until the meat will hold no more. The mixture should be a little soupy, but I only used a little more than half of the broth/fat.
Step six: Add emulsified rillettes to jars and tamp them down to eliminate air pockets. Chill overnight. Add melted lamb fat to cap the rillettes.
Since the last post, I’ve been playing around a bit. Starting off with making several attempts at Mapo ramen, after seeing a twitter post from the group who runs Mission Chinese. My best estimate was to make mapo tofu subbing in 2x ramen broth in place of the stock, adding noodles and then adding a whole load of pickled scallion greens. There was no magic, but it was simple and delicious.
I made a lamb and green almond pate which was better seared hard and served under an egg. The green almonds had too much crunch when uncooked.
Then, one twist I really liked was subbing in stewed rhubarb in place of tomatillo in a salsa made famous by Rick Rayless and includes garlic and chipotle.
