When you have Lamb, you make.....Lamb-aide??? Nah, you make Lamb Hash and Lamb-Bulgur Soup

Shades of my What to Do kinda Ali Nazik Kebab post. A couple of weeks past I decided to roast a leg of lamb.

Not wanting too much, I bought half a leg fro Seisel's, though in retrospect I should have gone to one of the many Halal markets in the greater San Diego area to pick this up. I rubbed the lamb with a paste of garlic, salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme. Same with the potatoes....I also threw in some leftover daikon as well. I decided to roast everything in my cast iron pan letting the fat from the lamb render off onto the root veggies.

Man, did the root veggies taste great....unfortunately the flavor lamb wasn't strong enough for the Missus. It was too tame and She refused to eat it. Then She uttered those fateful words..."I'm not eating it, but you better not waste any of it!"

 

Ohhhh-kay....there were a couple of pounds of lamb left after I had my fill, so what to do????

Duh.....one of my favorite things to do with leftover prime rib, ham, rotisserie chicken....not so much turkey though, is to make a hash. However, I wanted to roast more potatoes...so it was 86 on the potatoes in the hash. In the end, I minced up a bunch of the lamb, added minced onions, garlic, cilantro, oregano, and thyme. I used a couple of tablespoons of Greek yogurt as a binder and it crisped up pretty good. Finished with some salt and pepper, it was delici-yoso.....

 Roasted some red potatoes, sauteed off some collard greens and used the rest of the yogurt in a sauce, combining it with dill, lemon juice, garlic juice, salt, and pepper. Topped with a poached egg (of course), this was a heck of a brunch. For some reason the lamb flavors came through much better when caramelized in nice crunchy bits. I can't believe I've had years of cold lamb sandwiches (pretty darn good though), when I should have been making this.

I didn't stop there, though. Based on the Missus criticism, I decided to take this one step further and saved a small amount of meat and the lamb bone. Recently, I had been leafing through Jaque Pepin's latest cookbook, the huge Essential Pepin. I recalled the lamb-barley soup recipe.

So into the pot went the lamb bone, no beef broth for this version. Of course, the Missus requested it done to Her taste so no barley in this one. I replaced the barley with bulgur, which I added during the last half hour of simmering.

Flavored with some leftover fresh thyme, cilantro, and celery hearts (freeze the buggers instead of throwing them away - they have great flavor). This ended up being quite good, with no complaints from the Missus.

The Missus often takes credit for "inspiring" what I make in the kitchen......and She's probably right.

Comments

[Lynnea]

Wow, that hash really does sound delicious. So, I think you've just answered this week's biggest question in my mind: can you freeze celery? it doesn't get soggy?

[PedMa]

Yep, I get that kind of stuff when Ms Ped Ma, say "Arroy ma, but you can have it"

Sound familiar bra! hahhahhahha.

Sometimes they neve know the effort put into da' dish. All in fun...

Anyway, Happy New year!

Ped

[kat]

yummy ways to use up the lamb!

[Kirk]

H Lynnea - I freeze thecelery hearts all the time...though I use it for soups and nothing else.

Happy New Year to you too PedMa! he-he-he....

Hi Kat - I really enjoyed that hash.

[Hangzhou Hero]

Stop it Kirk, you're making us mortals look bad.

[Kirk]

LOL HH! This was actually a fail that I had to recover from!

[Peter]

when I have left over slow roasted lamb leg/shoulder, my choice is a dice/mince up the cooked lamb and turn it into the base for a shepherds pie but then again, I'm British and for most of us, shepherds pie is the answer to most things.

saying that, I have no idea if our wonderful mash topped pie exists in the US.

[Kirk]

Hi Peter - You can get Shepherd's Pie at many places here in San Diego...though many of them aren't that great! Thanks for taking the time to visit and comment!

[Christine]

Ouch. She went right after your heart, eh?

When you have lamb, you make...
... lamb stew?
... meatloaf? (the cooked lamb will give a great textural contrast)
... tacos?

[Kirk]

Hi Christine - Great ideas! Too bad I couldn't think of them on the fly....

[Alyssa]

I love your creativity! But I guess we won't be seeing lamb posts for a couple of months now!

[Kirk]

Who know Alyssa....you never can tell.... ;o)

[sarah]

This looks like it turned out really well and yummy! I doubt anyone would wanna waste any of it! :-) Thanks for sharing.