We’re gluttons for MUTTON!
It’s the unlikeliest food fad but, as HARRY WALLOP discovers, the old-fashioned favourites have made a sizzling return
WE HAVE all changed the way we shop and eat to some degree during this pandemic – from the lure of the sourdough starter to the disarming rise of the winter barbecue.
But one trend has surprised more than most: the sudden embracing of old-fashioned cuts of meat, such as mutton and oxtail.
Mutton – meat from sheep that are at least two years old – was an everyday and popular meal in Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s but had fallen massively out of favour in recent decades.
Now, sales of the unfashionable meat are soaring. Farmison, a leading online butcher, says sales of mutton went up 500% year on year in 2020, while sales of beef cheek rose 350% and oxtail shot up 260%.
Some of this increase is because all online food providers have enjoyed a surge in custom in lockdown. But, according to John Pallagi, Farmison’s chief executive, many home cooks have started to be more adventurous.
‘We’ve now got time,’ he says. ‘These lockdowns have meant people are spending far longer in their kitchen, in the core of the house, and they are experimenting and playing.’
RICHARD TURNER, a leading chef of a steak restaurant chain and author of Prime: The Beef Cookbook, as well as director of an online butchers, has witnessed customers ordering more curious cuts.
‘The increase in demand has been ludicrous,’ he says. ‘It’s comfort food, isn’t it? People like things that make them happy and people gravitate towards braising cuts in tough times. When things get really dark and hard, you want to eat simple comfort food. Ox cheek is one such example of that. I really love it.’
Mutton, meanwhile, has a long history in Ireland. Although these days you are more likely to find beef or lamb in your Irish stew, the meal was traditionally made with mutton cuts. Sheep were a valuable commodity and so were kept for a long time for wool and for milk. So by the time they were to be eaten, the meat was tough and slow stewing was one of the ways to make it edible.
‘If you get the right mutton, nothing is better,’ says John Pallagi. ‘But if you sell mutton at four years old it can be as tough as old boots. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, there weren’t the great cookbooks and chefs inspiring people.’
Richard Turner says there is another reason why these unfashionable cuts are coming back into fashion. ‘There is an important ethical dimension,’ he says. ‘Some of these meats, if they don’t make it into dog food, end up in landfill. Some butchers have to pay for these cuts to be taken away.’
An increasing number want to eat less meat but of a higher quality that won’t damage the environment. ‘For all those eating loins and prime cuts, it would be great if there are people eating the rest of the carcass. These are, I believe, the tastiest bits.’
I consider myself an adventurous meat-eating cook but I’ve never cooked mutton or oxtail. I turned to top Irish chef Richard Corrigan for inspiration and tried some recipes.