/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>4301310
It does if you buy that frozen crap from New Zealand. Shit tastes like a barn because it's meat from animals primarily bred for their wool, and the best wool comes from lambs with lots of lanolin, and the more lanolin the more it'll taste like licking the floor of a pig stall.

Lamb breeds that have more meat usually have less lanolin, so when you're breeding for food primarily (which is normal for most Australian and American lamb) you don't get that same flavour that a lot of people associate with lamb (and that turns a lot of people unfamiliar with it off).

Though you'll also get a stronger gamey taste (so a stronger taste of actual lamb, not barn) if they're grass fed rather than grain fed. A lot of American stuff is grain fed, though, and ends up tasting almost like beef. All told, if you want lamb that's distinctively gamey without tasting like a barn, get grass fed American (usually from a good butcher) or the vacuum sealed/wet-aged fresh stuff that comes from Australia. If you want expensive beef get supermarket American lamb, and if you like the whole barn taste get New Zealand. If you're from somewhere else and dealing with other sorts/sources, try to find out if it's from animals bred for their wool or not and if it's grass or grain to figure out what it'll taste like ahead of time.

So. Anyhow. Lamb. Though this may be the wrong thread to talk lamb in.