Every Ralphs or Safeway has some lamb out here. To me- Meh. Twice the cost of good roast beef and not quite as good. However, if I am served lamb that is done perfectly at a friends house, I do ask for seconds.
Lamb chops are dead easy. So is rack of lamb. And at least around me, a little cheaper than duck breast.
Duck breast is awesome, but my husband is happy to eat lamb and grumbles at duck, so i eat a lot more lamb than duck.
A few years ago, I didn’t have time to go Christmas shopping, so I stayed up late on Christmas Eve to make a big batch of paella that I put in a container and gave to my landlord (a Greek immigrant to Canada) as a present in lieu of a bottle of wine. He and his friends loved it!
Lamb, I have no problem in finding at Metro or Food Basics. (The big pieces are all frozen, of course.) And yeah, cooking meat with the bone in makes a world of difference. I’ll never understand what the big deal is with deboning!
@FlikTheBlue - around here, the major megamarts carry boneless leg of lamb infrequently, but almost always have individually sealed lamb chops, and rarely (around Valentines and Easter) prepped rack of lamb.
@puzzlegal - Yeah, chops are easy, but that was something my father made rarely as well, but he tended to overcook them, so they have less fond memories for me. Now if the store had, say, inch thick chops to work with, I’m sure I could cook them to a lovely medium rare without the risk, but the only ones that I seem to fine are normally far less.
And I rarely buy the pre-packed duck breasts, because it’s a lot better value to buy a whole frozen duckling for around 2.49/lb US and have duck breast, duck drumsticks, and then slow or pressure cooked duck broth with the carcass and thigh meat.
And I respect that you love your husband, but he’s just … wrong. But like I can talk, my wife doesn’t eat meat because she doesn’t care for the taste, a realization that she came to after years of having me cook a steak for her that was butterflied and well done to cook the ‘meat’ taste out.
I guess I’m lucky. We have a turkey farm 5 minutes away, and my buddy has sheep browsing his property. I help him butcher his lambs and take one home with me.
Come on, make up your mind! 
(bolding mine)
IIRC that’s what The Torah says you’re supposed to eat with Seder dinner.
→ Okay, it’s a fair cop. Although, in my defense, I can barely claim to have a mind anymore!
I also had that coming after my snark at the title of the post previously listed about “Santanic Nazis” in the Pit.
Okay, back to the thread. While my family would be historically more of the Ashkenazic traditions, it is not an uncommon Passover meal, as @Steven_Maven was suggesting. However there are (as always in our faith) arguments about whether lamb as a main dish is appropriate rather than the symbolic shank. For me, Passover is a holiday that is based around a significant meal, explicitly similar to Thanksgiving, which however is largely shorn of it’s religious elements. Both justify the extra cost and labor of a leg of lamb.
Still, at the time, it would have been my father, mother, brother, cousin and his wife, generally plus 2-3 close family friends of the faith. A party worthy of a leg of lamb! For just me, a lamb chop as suggested by puzzlegal is probably the best fix, if I can find one that suits.
If it’s a small animal, you can sometimes get them cut with two ribs to the chop.
But I’ve recently discovered rack of lamb. Such an easy roast, and so easy to cook it medium rare. I cook for three, though. A rack would be a bit much to cook for one.
Yeah, i bought a duck breast once. But i can buy the whole duck for about a dollar more than just the breast, and i like the rest of it. So i always buy a whole duck, even though the breast alone is a little easier to cook.
We never had lamb growing up (in Minnesota), but I decided a few years ago to try it for Easter. I followed a recipe, but it turned out really really rare; even though perhaps it was cooked perfectly, it looked like something most of the people at the table wouldn’t touch. So I had a quandary - cook it more and perhaps overcook it? or serve it rare and have squeamish guests? Since lamb isn’t in my wheelhouse, I don’t want to try making it again. Perhaps I should order it at a decent restaurant that knows how to cook it.
Another reason I won’t serve lamb is my wife’s brother was in the Army in Kuwait in the first gulf war. When he walked into the house, he could smell the lamb cooking and almost left. He said it was something that was so common in Kuwait and he acquired a real distaste for it, even the smell. (We had enough other dishes that day that he didn’t go hungry, but he didn’t try the lamb.)
My father-in-law couldn’t abide lamb after having being served mutton too many times at the boarding house he lived in post-WWII.
According to that Epicurious article I linked to earlier, that was apparently not an uncommon reaction from vets returning home from Europe after WWII, and helped contribute to the decline of lamb in the American diet.
Sadly! I love lamb, and was dismayed when my kids didn’t care for it. Lamb chops were a staple of my Chicago area childhood. Nowadays, in the Seattle area where I am, it’s really a niche item. Time to go get some chops!
We’re not Jewish, but we have a tradition of Chinese take-out, inspired by A Christmas Story (you’ll shoot your eye out, kid!).
We tend to have a somewhat fancy Christmas Eve meal, but what it is varies from year to year.
Really? Lamb is eaten by the bucketload across the world, and the Australians and New Zealanders don’t seem to have an issue with intensive sheep farming.
You can treat lamb like beef and serve it rare, but most people prefer it medium-well.
There’s another option, one I’ve taken advantage of when in your shoes. Serve it bloody rare, but dine by candlelight.
Turkey.
Hey, I love turkey. LOL
What does a large-scale Australian or New Zealand sheep farm look like? In the U.S., “factory farms” for meat animals (particularly pigs and chickens) tend to pack the animals in, and feed them grain.
Well I’m no sheep farming expert, but some of the largest sheep stations in Australia run to 5 million acres. It’s certainly not a cottage industry. I think the US is a bit of an outlier in its aversion to lamb.