Yay, New Zealand!! There’s a foodie restaurant in Sint Maarten (The Palms) that imports New Zealand lamb and goat. It is a game changer.
Correction: father-in-law. 
New Zealand lamb is relatively easy to find here in the US. Sam’s Club stocks it, and I thought Costco did, too, but I see they have Australian lamb. I could have sworn they used to sell New Zealand lamb. What I remember is that New Zealand lamb tends to be stronger in flavor than American lamb, and the reason for that I’ve been told is because it’s grass fed, while America lamb is usually grain fed.
As for the goat, to be honest, I don’t know its provenance. There’s a meat packing house here in Chicago I visit every so often, and it looks like they get the goat fresh, as there’s all manners of parts there. Want goat head? They got it. Goat testicles? No problem, in that bucket over there! I’m guessing that is locally processed.
When I lived in Tokyo, I used to eat at Indian restaurants frequently, and enjoyed mutton curry. I don’t believe I’ve had it in other dishes.
Are you sure? It was probably goat, no? (See above posts on this linguistic quirk.)
Aussie here who comes from a family of sheep graziers.
10s of thousands of livestock on the various family properties. Mainly for wool. Our was breeding 1st cross ie using Merino ewes and English longwool rams, in our case Border Leicesters.
Mutton was the family staple. We slaughtered our own beef on occasion. We didn’t raise pigs and goats were verboten.
Couple of reasons.
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A fair slice of the income came from selling lambs, more correctly as hoggets. The wether lambs would have gone for slaughter. The ewe lambs usually were purchased by 2nd cross breeders. So the best lambs were sold. A handful of the remnants were retained, run with a mixed mob from which we drew domestic rations. Most of the “killers” would have been 2-3 years old.
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We preferred mutton. Lamb has much less flavour and the fat is much softer. As it’s eaten the fat tends to coagulate in the mouth, especially if you consume with a cold drink. Being a blander, softer meat then the sauce and spices in the recipe comes into more prominence. Against that background I can see how mutton might be described as more gamey, but I think that’s not correct terminology. Game meats, wild duck, pheasant, rabbit, kangaroo etc are strongly flavoured, but they are lean.
However there is no doubting sheep can lay down fat. As one of my Prof’s would say, there is no theoretical limit to how much fat a sheep can accumulate if fed ad lib. Overly fat sheep make poor eating to my mind, which is also why I dislike waygu.
Did you hear about the ewe who never got pregnant?
She was always under the wether.
There is a celebration in West Africa called a “mishwa”, where mutton is king. Actually, mutton is the meat of choice in that area, so no surprise. When I was about to transfer from the Mali embassy to Uganda, my #2 guy came to me and said that the workers wanted to have a mishwa for me and wondered how many sheep I wanted to buy for it. 
Talk about putting someone on the spot! So I asked him what he thought would be sufficient and we agreed on three.
The day of the party arrived and it was held outside. Now, Mali is hotter than hell most of the year, and this day was no exception. Lots of flies were attracted to the food, which was basically boiled mutton. They gave me a plate and I was able to choke down a small bite. But the heat, the smell, the taste and all that fat was more than I could handle. It’s “common knowledge” in that part of the world that white people can’t take the heat, so I was able to claim wooziness and took my plate inside, where it was promptly disposed of.
It’s been a long time. I think it is the same one where as a child he pretended to be adrift on a life boat and rationed his food.
One of my current Youtube rabbit holes. Her farm is running 7,000 ewes on 6,000 acres (~30% dedicated to crops). Kind of fascinating watching modern farming in action. She was mentioning there is very little money in wool these days, other than Merinos - those excluded the sheep cost more to shear than they earn back from the wool. And she says (at least in her opinion) Merinos are “meh” for meat - they seem to be switching heavily to Primeline.
I completely forgot about the Middle Eastern restaurant in Alhambra (CA) that I used to go to all the time. Their lamb was cooked like that, and it was delicious.
My eyes first read this as “sheep glaziers,” and I thought “What an odd occupation.”
We’d say this about beagles.
I am not fond of eating meat but will oblige when visiting or traveling. Last year I visited relatives in Norway and was served some kind of lamb dish which I manged to finish. It actually tasted OK and I didn’t gag. This might have been because everyone was giving me a lot of attention during the meal.
Years ago I visited Greece with my fiance at the time. We visited some of his very old relatives on an island and ate lunch there. He told me it was chicken at the time. Several weeks later he informed me that they had killed the family goat in our honor. He knew I most likely would not have eaten had I known. Actually I guess it did taste like chicken.
I have probably eaten it on other less noteworthy occasions but these stick out as particularly memorable.
Huh, i think goat and chicken taste very different. I like both.
My sister had a half dozen sheep at one time as pets that kept her field mowed. (She is strange)
When she first got the sheep a guy would come periodically to shear them and he’d give her some cash for the wool. Over the years the amount he paid her decreased, then it was a break even deal. She eventually had to pay the guy to shear them.
I’ve never had mutton, but would be interested in trying it. I’ve never seen it on any restaurant menu, and I’m wondering whether this might be a possibility on my upcoming trip to Glasgow/Iceland.
I like lamb, although it’s been a while since I’ve had it. In addition to having it at Greek restaurants, I used to occasionally cook it at home. Mostly a lamb shank, but I remember getting lamb burgers many years ago.
I wish I had a funny mutton story, but I ain’t got mutton.
I have not knowingly tried mutton, but I’ve eaten at many Indian buffets, in which I’ve gotten to try goat meat (the other mutton), so there may have been some lamb mutton at some point. I’ve eaten plenty of venison, so I’m no stranger to gamey flavors.
Maybe it’s just my palate, but to me goat and mutton are nothing like each other.
Yeah, but it’s confusing that south asian restaurants refer to goat meat as mutton. I was assured by the staff at the sri lankan restaurant I was at that I was being served mutton from sheep, but I do still have some doubts. Didn’t taste like goat to me though.
Yes, when I referred to goat as ‘the other mutton’ I was referring to the fact that goat is often called mutton in south Asian restaurants, not the similarity in flavor (which I wouldn’t know, since as far as I know I’ve never eaten lamb mutton).
I went to a big grocer in the area (Fresh Farms, Niles, IL) and took a look. There is nothing labeled mutton is available in the cases. There is loads of lamb, from heads to hooves. Tongues, testicles, stomach, cual, all the muscle cuts. The highest end chops are $30/lb!
They have goat available but I only saw stew chunks. These packages have Halal labels afixed.
The meat counter was closed when I was there last night but I understand they’re closer to a full service butcher than the usual grocery tray fillers and they easily accommodate special orders.