Ingredient

Mutton

Mutton is meat from a sheep over about two years old. It is darker, firmer, more strongly flavoured and much cheaper than lamb, and it largely vanished from British shops in the second half of the twentieth century for reasons of fashion rather than of quality.

Lamb, hogget, mutton

One animal at three ages, and they are genuinely different ingredients.

Lamb

Under a year. Pale, tender, mild. What almost everything sold in Britain is.

Hogget

One to two years. Darker, firmer, more flavour. The best compromise and increasingly available from good butchers.

Mutton

Over two years. Dark red, firm, with a pronounced flavour and much more fat.

The fat

Mutton fat is harder, whiter and more strongly flavoured than lamb fat, and it is where most of the characteristic taste sits.

Availability

Rarely in supermarkets. Butchers, farm shops and halal butchers are the reliable sources.

Why it disappeared, and why it is coming back

Post-war British sheep farming shifted decisively towards lambs slaughtered young, driven by faster turnover, a milder flavour that suited changing tastes, and the disappearance of the long slow cooking that mutton needs. A generation grew up without meeting it.

The flavour has a genuine intensity that some people dislike, and that is a fair preference rather than a failure of nerve. But a great deal of the reputation for greasiness and strong smell comes from cooking it fast, which suits it no better than it suits brisket.

It has returned in Britain partly through South Asian and Caribbean cooking, where mutton never went away and where the techniques for it were never lost.

How to cook it

Everything here is long, slow and moist.

• Mutton stew or hotpot, cooked for three hours or more with root vegetables and pearl barley.
• Curry. Mutton curry — rogan josh, nihari, a Caribbean curry goat made with mutton — is where the meat is at its best.
• Slow-roasted shoulder, treated exactly like lamb shoulder but given another hour.
• Braised with onions and capers, the old English preparation, served with caper sauce.
• Salted or cured, as in the Scandinavian and Scottish traditions. Curing quantities are a food-safety matter for the Food Standards Agency.
• Minced for kofta or keema, where the fat content is an advantage.
• Not grilled or roasted pink. There is no version of that which works.

Handling the fat

This is where most mutton cooking goes wrong.

1. Trim heavy external fat back before cooking. Unlike lamb fat, a thick mutton fat cap does not render into something anybody wants to eat.
2. Brown the meat properly and pour off the rendered fat before building the braise.
3. Cook it the day before if you can, and chill it overnight.
4. Lift off the set fat in a sheet the next day. Mutton fat sets hard and comes away cleanly.
5. Reheat gently and taste for seasoning again — flavours shift considerably overnight.
6. Serve it hot. Mutton fat sets at a higher temperature than lamb fat and a lukewarm plate is unpleasant.

Common questions