Tag Archives: Lamb

Australian supermarkets racing to the hormone-free gutter

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Another Australian supermarket chain has gotten into the BS business by claiming the lamb on its shelves is hormone-free.

This despite hormones never being used in lamb production in Australia.

Melbourne supermarket chain Maxi Foods has signs on the meat shelves of its Blackburn and Upper Ferntree Gully stores advertizing that "All our beef, lamb and pork are Australian grown with no added hormones."

The chain is following Coles, which began advertising HGP-free beef last year.
The advertising has angered the Sheepmeat Council, which said hormones have never been used in lamb production in Australia.

President Kate Joseph said growth hormones were never used because they were not needed.

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority confirmed no hormones were registered for use in lamb production in Australia.

Australia has just as much foodborne illness as everyone else. Retailers get drunk on the profit margins for specious claims like organic/natural/local/sustainable or hormone-free, which have nothing to do with people barfing.

Market microbiologically safe food – and back it up with meaningful data.
 

Crypto outbreak linked to petting farm at Welsh castle; 13 sick

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When health types warn about a certain activity, it’s code for, we have an outbreak but we can’t tell you just yet, so be careful.

I should have been more cynical when the health types in Wales warned this morning about infections from petting zoos. I’m still naively optimistic.

There are at least 13 people sick with cryptosporidium after a lambing event at a stately castle in Wales.

The BBC reports, those who became ill visited Erddig Hall, owned by the National Trust, over the last 12 months.

Public Health Wales said there was no ongoing risk and that it would continue to monitor the situation.

Dr Judy Hart, Consultant in Communicable Disease Control, said: "Cryptosporidium is generally a mild disease.”

Unless you have the runs for six weeks.

A table of petting zoo-related outbreaks is available at:
http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks

The table doesn’t include the ones in the U.K., which are particularly egregious, but will soon.

Gratuitous food porn shot of the day – Xmas eve edition

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Christmas Eve dinner in Manhattan with a couple of Kansas State modern languages graduate students from Senegal (they speak French there).

Oven-roasted French-cut lamb ribs – cooked to 140F but still needed a quick zap in the microwave to bring out the flavor — with roasted herb-garlic potatoes, Frenchy cheese, whole grain bread and salad.
 

Lamb on a shovel in a fire pit: finger test insufficient

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Once the kid goes to sleep, Amy and I usually adjourn to the bedroom, no matter how early, and chill.

I go through my ritual of flipping through bad TV while Amy does fascinating farm animal things on Facebook.

Last night, my flipping took me to the Primal Grill With Steven Raichlen, where the dude was cooking lamb chops on a shovel in a fire pit.

Apparently, by holding the shovel over the open wood fire, the smoke curls up over the shovel to add a robust flavor to the chops.

This guy’s got way too much time on his hands.

To check if the lamb was properly cooked, he pushed his finger into a chop, proclaimed it “spongy” and therefore done.

However you want to cook meat – with a shovel, a pick-axe, a V-8 engine — use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to ensure a safe food temperature.

The hopeful two-legged lamb

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From the genetics-is-a-wonderfully-mutating-thing file, a two-legged lamb (right, exactly as shown) was born at a farm at Shangdong province in eastern China.

Faded Tribune reports that farmer Cui Jinxiu said,

“I did not think he would live very long, but then he managed to struggle up and stand on his two legs in order to drink some milk from his mother. He was surprisingly steady on his feet — and it did not seem to disturb his mother that he only had two legs. I was so impressed at his desire to survive that I began feeding him extra milk from a bottle. He gambols around with the other lambs when it’s sunny even though he is only a week old now. And he has such a friendly personality, he seems to enjoy life and I think he doesn’t realize he’s disabled.”
 

One reason the Globe and Mail became a terrible newspaper; giving space to columnist Leah McLaren who tries to cook lamb and poisons in-laws

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The Toronto Globe and Mail used to be a decent newspaper. I was enamored with the paper and its journalists as a genetics undergrad, was thrilled when I started writing regularly for the paper in the 1990s, and then dismayed as the amount of crap published began to far outweigh the thoughtful stuf.

Once such sign of decline was the hiring of columnist Leah McLaren about a decade ago. Chapman was somewhat enamored with her self-indulgent depictions of young female life in hip Toronto; I thought it was bullshit.

Leah is still at the Globe as it continues its drawn-out decline, and wrote on Saturday that,

“This year for Christmas I poisoned the in-laws.

“They had flown all the way from Toronto to spend the holidays in London, dragging several extra bags of gifts across the Atlantic like a modern-day Santa and Mrs. Claus. In return, I had planned a feast for dinner.

“The centrepiece of the meal was a beautifully aged prime rib roast. I had purchased it, for nearly $100, from my local Notting Hill butcher, who specializes in organic, free-range, ethically farmed beef, lamb and poultry.

“I don’t eat much meat these days, but everything about that shop made me feel safe, from the quaint striped awning to the well-heeled locals queuing up for their premium giblets to the butcher with his starched, white-linen apron making small talk as he trimmed the leg of lamb. Even the store’s slogan (“Real meat naturally fed”) was heartening. What could possibly be more healthy, comforting or downright trendy than a rib roast for Christmas? As I stepped out of the shop with my several pounds of Grade A flesh in hand, I was determined to follow the butcher’s emphatic instructions: “Do not overcook.”

“And I didn’t. The prime rib was perfect – except for the 36 hours of stomach-churning misery it caused everyone who ate it.”

Leah’s lesson from all this? Don’t eat red meat.

One Moses Shuldiner responded with a letter in the Globe today, stating that Leah’s “mistake was to not inform herself of proper food handling techniques as recommended by the Toronto Public Health Department, which can be downloaded from the City of Toronto’s website. … After reading information from public health anyone can, for a nominal fee, write the test to become a certified food handler, ensuring mastery of the material.”

Shill. Mere mortals do not have to become certified food handlers to cook dinner for the in-laws, or anyone else. I cooked lamb on Christmas Eve and my 1-year-old ate it. No one barfed. Use a tip-sensitive digital meat thermometer. Next time, Leah, stick it in.

Gratuitous food porn shot of the day (Xmas eve edition) — French rib rack lamb

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The things you can find on sale at Dillon’s supermarket (part of the Kroger chain) in Manhattan (Kansas).

For Christmas Eve dinner, which has no special significance other than we made it home from Minnesota before the storm hit, only to get walloped in Manhattan, I decided to cook the lamb – with a rosemary, Dijon mustard glaze, to a yummy and greasy thermometer-verified 140F. Accompanied with roasted potatoes and carrots, along with microwaved asparagus in garlic, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with whole wheat rolls and a mushroom-fat-free-lamb-stock roux. Served with a 2005 Zinfandel from Napa Valley courtesy of Amy’s Aunt Jean and Uncle Mark.

Below is Sorenne doing her best Pebbles Flintstone impersonation on a lamb lollipop.

Nothing like a hot tub in a 15F blizzard to remove the grease and mess and stuff.

Christmas Day is usually T-bone steaks, but now I have to figure out if they are meat tenderized or not (good luck). More about that later.

Top Chef: Medium-rare lamb is 140F and soy sauce is the secret ingredient in perfect gravy

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Jennifer and daughter Ingrid brought the lamb, I did the cooking, and Amy’s mom flew in from Vegas. Another Thursday night in Manhattan (Kansas).

What better occasion to try out alleged perfect gravy that scientists with the U.K. Royal Society of Chemistry have determined contains drippings from a roast on a bed of halved onions, carrots and celery and the left-over water from boiled cabbage.

Add salt, pepper and a sprinkling of flour to thicken and …  a touch of soy sauce.

Dr John Emsley, a chemical scientist, says soy sauce should be used in place of traditional gravy browning because monosodium glutamate from the soy sauce brings out the meaty flavour.

A spokesman for the society said:

“Chemistry and cooking are basically the same thing. Both need to have the correct formula, equipment and procedures. Just think of Heston Blumenthal.”

Eww. Blumenthal makes me think norovirus and barf.

And I didn’t take pictures of Thursday’s dinner, but Top Chef on Wed. night also struggled with lamb, and none of the hot-shot chefs could agree on how to define medium-rare lamb.

Chef Kevin (left):

“We’re having temperature issues with the lamb. What I think of as medium-rare, is apparently what she thinks of as rare. I don’t know who’s right or wrong, I don’t know if there is anyone who is right or wrong.”

The judges knew:

“This was seared raw lamb that was horrible.”

“Severely underdone.”

“Center was like jello.”

“A little too bloody.”

The lamb shoulder roast we had last night was cooked to 140F. There’s even a chart on the Internet that says medium-rare lamb is 140F. I have no idea where the numbers on the chart came from, but it seems about right.

Genius chefs and judges: use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer and stick it in.

The gravy was delicious.

A Canadian in New Zealand: Cartwheeling in sheep poo

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This weekend during a mini-adventure an hour north I got to tick two things off my Things to do in New Zealand list: drive on the left side of the road and pet a lamb. While the former turned out to be easier than initially presumed (aside from roundabouts), it was the latter that had me giddy.

Hills covered in sheep were everywhere and I couldn’t resist the temptation to hop a fence (despite the electrical shock endured) and cartwheel the fields (right), scaring sheep and likely placing my hands in sheep poo. I didn’t wash them, though I really should have.

Sheep, like cows and goats, are ruminant mammals and therefore can carry E. coli O157:H7. If you cartwheel in [sheep] doo doo, wash your hands.

What temperature would you like your lamb chops?

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This is a first; instead of me asking at a restaurant what medium-rare means — temperature-wise — the waitress tonight asked Amy after she ordered lamb chops, "What temperature would you like those at?"

I immediately jumped in, blowing my food safety cover, and asked, "You actually have thermometers back in the kitchen?"

She said, "Yes."

I’ve been a food safety geek for coming up on 15 years. No one has ever asked me what temperature I wanted my food.

I couldn’t believe it.

The occasion was Angelique’s birthday, so Amy and I, along with Bob, decided to take our friend to the newest Manhattan (Kansas) eatery, della Voce.

When ordering, the waitress told us the meat on the menu was hormone and antibiotic free. Uh-oh, I thought, another over-priced food porn joint. Not interested.

But, the food was good and the atmosphere was great for a leisurely 2.5 hour meal. Stick it in.