Lamb shoulder: a bargain cut with plenty of flavor

Arm cut, with round bone, most fat along edge

Blade cut, with fat throughout, flat bones

In the more than 10 years since this blog started I've posted at least a dozen items about lamb. Here's another, this time focusing on one of the few remaining bargain cuts: shoulder.

Most of the time I go for shoulder chops, which could be purchased this past weekend at the Reading Terminal Market for $5.49 to $8.99 a pound, about half the price you'd pay for loin or rib (rack) chops.

Martin's Quality Meats & Sausages was the low-price leader, selling lamb from Catelli Brothers, a South Jersey processor and distributor which raises lamb on its own farms in Quebec and buys lamb from producers in the western U.S., Australia and New Zealand. La Divisa Meats sold at the highest price, using meat from Jamison Farm in Latrobe, a boutique producer of Pennsylvania lamb which also supplies top restaurants, including Blue Hill. Giunta's was in the middle, at $6.99, with Colorado lamb distributed by Marcho Farms of Souderton. (Over at the new Whole Foods, shoulder chops from Iceland sell for $7.99. Because it is leaner than most other lamb, it has a milder flavor; for me, that's a negative, but others find that appealing.)

As much as I enjoy a thick loin chop or lamb "lollipops" cut from the rib, the heartiest lamb flavor can be found in the shoulder chops.

The cut is less tender, which is one of the reasons why shoulder is less expensive than loin or rib. Just as in beef steaks, the more tender cuts command a higher price. But what the shoulder lacks in relative tenderness, it more than makes up in flavor. And even though shoulder isn't as tender as the other lamb cuts, it can still be rewarding when simply grilled; it may be a bit chewier than the other cuts, but it's not too tough for the high, dry heat.

Shoulder chops come in two different cuts: arm and blade. Arm chops, as you might expect, are cut from the part of the shoulder closest to the arm, hence the round bone you'll find in this style. The blade cut comes from closer to the neck and features -- guess what -- the shoulder blade bone.

In recipes they are fairly interchangeable. Although some think the arm chop is more suitable to braising than the blade, both can be broiled, grilled or pan-fried. The arm chop will have less fat overall as well as less marbling. The blade looks like a smaller version of the beef chuck blade steak and has more marbling. No matter the cooking method, shoulder needs to be cooked to at least medium, and also holds up to longer cooking -- though if you go beyond medium well you do risk shoe leather.

If you're braising them you can go with a thick cut, but when grilling, thinner is better; I like them cut no more than three-quarters of an inch.

When I stopped by Nick Macri's La Divisa Meats he only had large pieces of shoulder, not chops, but he was more than happy to cut to order.

Before grilling I bathed them in a yogurt marinade. Although the marinade has some ability to tenderize, it won't turn the chop into a tenderloin. Instead, I use the marinade for flavor.

For the two chops (which weighed in at a total of 14 ounces, just under a pound) I mixed about four ounces of full-fat plain yogurt (not Greek) with a couple tablespoons of olive oil, four cloves of minced and mashed garlic (adding a little kosher salt while scraping the cutting board with the back of your chefs knife turns minced garlic into a mash), the zest and juice of a small lemon, and whatever spices or herbs strike my fancy. This time it was cumin and cardamom -- two tablespoons each, ground. I placed the chops in a single layer in a non-reactive baking pan, salted and peppered them, then spread the marinade on both sides of the chops. I covered and refrigerated them for six hours, though you could certainly leave them overnight or cut the time down to four hours.

I didn't bother wiping off the marinade when it was time to hit the grill, I just placed them on the hot oiled grate over a medium fire and cooked about four-to-five minutes a side for medium.

I cooked up a mess of mustard greens with garlic as my side dish. A cold lager or your favorite red completes the meal.

Butcher Shop To Change Owners

Giunta's Prime Shop, operated by Reading Terminal Market veteran Charles Giunta for nearly eight years, will have a new owner soon. Rob Passio, who's worked for Giunta a few years, expects to take over as the new proprietor next month if all the paperwork moves as scheduled.

Passio, who started in the trade as a teen in South Philly, has worked for a number of butchers, including Charles' brother Martin's original Philadelphia sausage factory, now in South Jersey. (Martin also operates Martin's Quality Meats & Sausages at the RTM.) He's also put in time at one of the former Genuardi supermarket meat departments.

Rob plans no changes in meat sourcing and staffing at the stall, located in the aisle between Iovine Brother's Produce and L. Halteman Family Country Foods.

He does hope to slowly add some value-added items, like marinated meats. Passio also expects to wait a while before changing signage to reflect new ownership.

New Ad Campaign by Reading Terminal Market

If you're trying one day to stay out of a sudden rainstorm by taking advantage of the SEPTA bus shelters, you might spy one of the new series of ads for the Reading Terminal Market, like this one touting its butchers. The ads will also appear in print media.

The new campaign highlights categories of products available at the Market and features photos of merchants in each category, said RTM General Manager Paul Steinke. The first series highlights meats, produce, seafood, bakery goods and cheeses.  Other categories will be added down the road, he said.

The ads also feature an adaption of the market's logo to emphasize "Fresh and Local Every Day!".

The only meat vendor left out of the ad is Fair Food (which is featured in the produce ad). Except on delivery days, however, Fair Food only offers frozen meats, and they don't cut meat to order.

Giunta's Prime Shop

At least one reader of this blog complained in the past about the name of this butcher shop at the Reading Terminal Market, objecting to the use of "Prime" for a shop that doesn't sell prime beef. Technically, the critique is on-target: Charles Giunta does not sell USDA prime grade beef.

But I don't care. His beef may be "only" USDA Choice, but his eye in picking out primals and his hereditary butchering skills have won my regular patronage. For what it's worth, overall his meats are far better than that sold by Ochs in its last few years at the market.

For the holidays I picked up a small prime standing rib roast (prime as in the definition of the cut, not the USDA grade). Even though he was exceedingly busy on the Friday before Christmas he took the time to get a new full rib from his walk-in refrigerator and asked me how many ribs and from which end, i.e., chuck end or loin end. When I asked for his recommendation, he suggested the chuck end, which he thought more flavorful than the loin end though it can be a slightly tougher part of the full seven-rib cut. He did a great job of a trimming my two-rib roast, leaving just the right amount of fat, semi-separating the bones for easy carving and expertly tying it all together, ready for the oven.
 
It made a superb meal on Christmas Day. No doubt it was helped by the fact that it sat it in the fridge for two days, unwrapped except for some wax paper loosely placed over the top, a do-it-yourself aging technique which will improve almost any piece of beef. I took the meat out of the fridge a few hours before cooking so it would lose some of its refrigerator cool, then seared all sides of the meat stovetop in a roasting pan (no need for additional fat). After about 10-12 minutes of browning I simply salted and peppered before placing the standing rib in a 200F oven. It cooked on a rack in the roasting pan at this low temperature until my digital probe registered 135F (this took about 150 minutes). After resting half an hour while I prepped the rest of our meal I carved the meat, and it was perfectly medium rare (quite rosy, but not red) through and through, from just below the outer crust to the deepest part of the interior. Best of all, it tasted absolutely yummy with plenty of beef flavor, with the tenderness one would expect from USDA Prime. The five-pound roast priced at $10.95/pound could be considered dear, but I thought it great value for a superior hunk of protein.

Steaks cut from the same primal are a favorite of mine and I've always been satisfied by Giunta's rib steaks on the bone. But I've also cooked his filet mignon, flank steak and hanger steak and never been disappointed. Ditto for pieces of chuck I've braised in a variety of fashions, as well as short ribs.

In recent weeks I've cooked up two ground meat dishes from Giunta. I used his pre-ground (on premises, not from a wholesaler) meatloaf mix -- beef, veal and and pork -- to make meatballs. Last week I asked him to grind chuck to my order, which went into an all-beef meatloaf (it was assisted by my addition of half a teaspoon of unflavored gelatin to mimic the collagen veal would have provided). We enjoyed both.

Lamb is one of those meats that's pretty good no matter where you buy it, so sometimes I obtain it from Giunta's and other times from his brother Martin. (Both learned their trade in the family butcher shop in the Italian Market.) Giunta's ducks are superb, offering the classic Long Island style duckling raised and packed by Joe Jurgielewicz & Son of Berks County. (For Muscovy duck visit Godshall's Poultry.)

Best of all, Giunta's prices are competitive -- rarely more expensive than what you'd pay in a supermarket, and frequently much better value.

More About Meat

I had a chance to talk a bit about beef today with Nick Ochs of Harry G. Ochs & Sons (shown at right getting into the spirit -- and garb -- during the Pennsylania Dutch Festival at the Reading Terminal Market a few years ago).

The Ochs stall has long been known as a purveyor of prime beef, but given my conversation with Charlie Giunta a few days ago (see earlier post) I wanted to know a bit more about his beef.

Nick said he uses the same suppliers in Lancaster County as his dad Harry did. He exclusively buys USDA prime beef sides, which was a mild surprise to me, since I thought only some of his inventory was prime. The only time he orders choice, he said, is when a customer specifically requests it; an example he gave was someone who wanted ribs with a bit less fat on them.

His suppliers hang the sides he selects for four weeks, which is as long as most butchers and restaurants selling or serving dry aged beef. Even the meat that goes into his ground beef ages that long since it's all coming from the same sides and ground at the store.

A few customers like their beef for steak and roasts aged longer, and Nick obliges. Lynn Abraham, for example, goes for six weeks. He's even had a rare customer (a Manhattanite who forsook Lobel's for Ochs via mail order) who asked for eight weeks. Beyond eight weeks, says Nick, the beef becomes way too livery tasting. Occasionally, when his supply at the store is low, he might pull some sides from his suppliers' aging rooms at three weeks, but that's the exception, not the rule.

All of Nick's beef and poultry comes from Lancaster County. The lamb and pork come from farther afield.

Nick said his sales of prime dry aged beef have held up pretty well, even though they took a dip early in the recent recession. Five or six years ago a lot of market shoppers thought the lack of bright red color like they find in supermarket wet aged beef indicated poor quality. Today more shoppers are aware of prime beef and its characteristics, Nick said.

Fowl For Your Feast

A beautiful, mahogany colored roasted bird makes a wonderful edible centerpiece for a holiday table. And no bird is more Christmas-y than a roast goose.

At the Reading Terminal Market L. Halteman Family has locally raised geese in stock. The birds, roughly 10 pounds, sell for $5.79/pound. The Fair Food Farmstand is selling geese from Griggstown (NJ) Quail Farm for $10/pound. Geese and lots of other birds can be obtained from Godshall's Poultry. In all cases it's wise to call ahead and order. It's almost too late to order from Fair Food; orders for the Griggstown geese, as well as pheasants, must be placed with Fair Food by 9 a.m. this Monday.

Fair Food has ordering deadlines for other holiday roasts, including country hams, pork loin and shoulder roasts, briskets, whole prime ribs and lamb legs and shoulders. See Fair Food's weekly newsletter for the details.

All the other butchers at the market (Martin's Quality Meats & Sausage, Giunta's Prime Shop, Harry Ochs & Sons, and S&B Meats) also can accommodate special orders for the holidays. Among other items, Giunta's is selling turduckens for $39.95 apiece.

Natural and Unnatural Meats

When Charles Giunta opened his Giunta's Prime Shop at the Reading Terminal Market his goal was to offer strictly organic or hormone-free meats. Though his signage suggested he'd be carrying USDA prime grade meats, he did not.

Now, Charles' products happen to be of excellent quality; I think his wet-aged beef, particularly the steaks, are about the best value you can find in red meat protein.

But the signs are misleading, and only a portion of the beef he carries is hormone-free, let alone organic. You have to ask whether a particular cut is hormone-free before you buy it, and the staff is not uniformly informed. Although I prefer hormone-free meats, I don't have hard-and-fast rules about it – if the beef tastes good. But I don't think he signs should suggest otherwise.

As for the "Prime" moniker, while that is also deceiving, I don't have as much of a problem. When USDA changed its grading standards more than 20 years ago, the difference between Prime and Choice became a lot fuzzier, as far as I am concerned. There's plenty of Prime out there that isn't, and, likewise, it's not that difficult to find Choice that tastes like Prime. And I won't even get into how most of the prime rib roasts (more properly called standing rib roasts) sold in this country are not Prime grade beef.

Likewise, only some of Charles' poultry products are hormone-free organic. He initially carried a lot of Eberle product, but now he focuses on Bell & Evans, which is a natural bird, i.e., no additives, non-therapeutic antibiotics or growth hormones. The all-natural ducks from Joe Jurgielewicz & Son of Shartlesville, about half an hour north of Reading, are superb.

When I recently asked Charles about this issue, he observed that he simply couldn't have survived on just organic and natural meats because they are more expensive; his customers just didn't purchase them in high enough quantities to justify basing the business on them. While there are a few customers who will pay $18 or $23 for a steak, the vast majority of shoppers, including those at the Reading Terminal Market, look for the least expensive product that still offers reasonable quality.

A tip of the hat to fellow blogger Gaetano of Philly Market Cafe for refocusing my attention on the signage discrepancy.