Mint, vinegar, sugar. It isn’t tough to make. And that way you can control the mint content.
Poll: What do you think is the best way to prepare/serve lamb?
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Greek/Mediterranean style; maybe in a gyro, maybe as a dish on its own; probably with tatziki
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Indian style, with curry or something equally spicy
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British-style, with mint sauce
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In chili
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Some other way
I frequently get rack of lamb from Costco by way of NZ and I love it. I just salt and pepper it and sear it in an oven-proof pan and throw in some sprigs of rosemary and put in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. Sometimes I make a sauce which is basically simple syrup with sprigs of mint dipped it.
I must say it’s expensive which is the main reason I don’t eat more of it. Count me of the opinion that it doesn’t reach critical mass due to American 19th century range wars.
BTW, if you are ever in the Austin, TX area and want to eat mutton, Southside market in Elgin, TX serves barbecued mutton which is to kill for.
FWIW,
Rob who is going to find some lamb for lunch.
I had something like that once on restaurant lamb chops, and I loved it, but haven’t been able to duplicate satisfactorily it at home. Does anyone have a good recipe?
I’ve found that not only does Costco carry the best-flavored lamb around, it’s also the cheapest. Theirs is always New Zealand lamb, and they only carry loin lamb chops and rack of lamb, so if I want the even cheaper shanks or shoulder chops or other stewing meat, I have to go elsewhere.
But yeah, we eat lamb at our house and we love it. I’ve never tasted mutton, but I’m not afraid of strong flavors, so I’d probably like that as well.
Honestly, just chop up mint, throw it into vinegar (experiment with the type to your liking), taste it, add sugar if needed, or water if needed, or more mint if needed, and keep in a sealed container. It is such a personal taste thing I am not sure a recipe is going to help much.
Americans got sick of mutton starting in the depression. Several depression era movies mention it unfavorably, usually in the context of a boarding house serving it every night. I like mutton, and even goat, when prepared as part of Indian cuisine, but I don’t think I would care for them prepared the way my mother prepared most meat: boiled in a pressure cooker until tender, no spices.
Hmm…interesting, but I’m not a huge fan of vinegar. Do you think it might be acceptable to replace the vinegar with bourbon?
I took a few minutes to understand this, which is even odder seeing as I was listening to Dead Flowers by the Stones at the same time.
I am also a wimp, although I loved veal parmegan (sp) when I was a teenager.
I have blocked it from my memory so thoroughly that I cannot even spell it. 
So are you trying to say that American palates are trained by what’s available in the form of mainstream fast food, canned goods or frozen dinner? That’s a depressing thought.
As mentioned upthread, FWIW, there’s plenty of lamb to be found in ethnic fast food like gyros, donair, kefta, souvlaki and kebab (all of which liberally overlap with each other, granted, but I’d get beaten up if I walked into the local gyros shop and asked for a donair).
Growing up in MA just down the street from a butcher, we had lamb (and veal) at least a couple times a month in chop form; legs were reserved for Easter. One of the biggest frustrations I’ve had since moving to the South is the low availability and EXTREMELY high cost of lamb anything. It just so happens that I was recently grumbling about it to the farrier who takes care of our horses at work, who used to be in the meat business and who also has a significant taste for lamb, and he gave the same “war” story as the one above- that lamb was a fairly popular dish, especially in lower-income families, prior to the depression/World War I. Once the GIs had come back from overseas stuffed full of low-end mutton, that was the end of the lamb market. Stupid Europeans, always ruining everything.
I get it when I can- indeed, there is about half of an entire lamb sitting in my deep freezer at the moment- but DH, who hadn’t been exposed to it at all growing up, hates the taste of it (says it has too much of a taste- basically what other folks have already said- plus he was a vegetarian for years and is limited in his meat appreciation). So I have to either wait until lamb-eating company comes over, or I make a dish that I know will keep long enough for me to finish off on my own.
I have tried lamb several times… but I just don’t like it. I’ll eat exotic foreign cuisine, but lamb is just awful.
Another factor might be wool. You need adult sheep to make wool, lambs to make meat. Didn’t Mike Rowe find that the culls (most males and females with inferior wool) were separated for butchering? Or the meat breeds different from wool breeds?
I’m a city girl so this is just a WAG.
Try adding a little ground cumin to the lamb sometime - you won’t be sorry - it has a real affinity for the meat.
The Mexican restaurants in my neighborhood have goat tacos (well, actually you can get the various taco fillings in most any entree). Wonderful stuff! Flavorful and tender. Yum!
Well I know, but this requires fresh mint. Where do you get that? (I expect it is possible to find it, for a price, at specialty stores somewhere, but it is not going to be at my local supermarket any more than decent imported English mint sauce.* I did try making some sauce once with dried mint from the spice aisle, but that was an abject and disgusting failure.)
Also, as I recall from what my mother used to do, aren’t you supposed to make a sort of strong mint tea first, by pouring a little boiling water on the mint and letting it infuse for a bit, before you add the vinegar and sugar? I doubt whether you will get much mint flavor just by mixing chopped leaves with vinegar and sugar cold.
I admit I may be misremembering this because Mum did not make the sauce from fresh mint very often. It was much easier for her to use the shop bought stuff (not the same, but still good), and I rather think that even in England back then it was not that easy to find the fresh leaf in the shops. (We did have some growing in our back garden for a while, basically as a weed, but the dog liked to pee on it.)
The imported stuff I use now is concentrated sauce. It has some sugar and vinegar in it already, but you are supposed to add more of each, to taste, before you use it. The concentrate by itself is thick, way too sweet, and not nearly tangy enough.
*Actually, I think the watery stuff they do sell is a British brand, (Crosse & Blackwell probably), but it sure as hell is not like what I used to get in England.
At my local supermarket it’s there with the parsley and dill in the “normal” herbs section (as opposed to the pricier, plastic-packaged herbs which fetch a bit of a mark-up). Otherwise, if your supermarket sells fresh basil, thyme, and that sort of stuff, look in that section. If your supermarket doesn’t sell these, then maybe it’s time to find a better supermarket. 
I’m sorry, njtt, I didn’t mean to come across snooty. It does need fresh mint, but I see that in my local supermarket all the time. You can also grow it, which gives a wonderful smell, though takes over gardens easily.
I think you said you were in SoCal, so it might not be as available in supermarkets over there. Here in Virginia most supermarkets with good fresh herb selections carry mint.
I heard that in the sport of golf, sandtraps were created by grazing sheep. A big chunk of land for golf (in the early days of the sport, anyway) weren’t set aside solely for the sport. The difference is that sheep (said my teacher) tear out grass by the roots. If sheep destroy grazing land that way, maybe cattle are a better choice.
I used to find lamb in the store and it smelled funky. I love gyros and good lamb is very tasty. But the supply wasn’t there for me to explore the possibilities in the kitchen, so I stopped looking.
ETA: Wikipedia—
With a much narrower face, sheep crop plants very close to the ground and can overgraze a pasture much faster than cattle.[10] For this reason, many shepherds use managed grazing, where a flock is rotated through multiple pastures, giving plants time to recover.[10][13] Paradoxically, sheep can both cause and solve the spread of invasive plant species. By disturbing the natural state of pasture, sheep and other livestock can pave the way for invasive plants.
I’ve never seen a supermarket that didn’t carry fresh mint (our local Walmart carries it in the middle of winter, and we’re in the asscrack of Appalachia), but if you can’t find it you can always grow it. Chuck a seedling from the garden center or a small sprig with some roots from someone else’s garden into a pot, put it in the sun, and water it once in a while. You’ll have all the mint you can stand.