Portland Princesses & British Lamb Week

Every year, British Lamb week is celebrated the first week in September. Below highlights the different cuts lamb has to offer and those ones that we sometimes forget. We rear our own lambs here on the farm with lleyn ewes (female sheep) mated to a charollais tup (male sheep). We find this combination creates a fantastic lamb that finishes well on our land. If you know your sheep breeds you can maybe tell by the heading we have some new arrivals!

See below a quick guide of what we can offer:

Neck: One of the cheaper cuts on the sheep and one of the best. Slow-cook it in a stew or a Lancashire hotpot and it turns beautifully tender. Neck fillet can also be cut into medallions and seared in a hot pan which creates succulent mini lamb steaks.

Best end: The rack. Seven or eight ribs can be roasted whole for 20–25 minutes, or cut into cutlets for the barbecue. As racks, they make a spectacular centre piece for a meal and need nothing more than simple seasoning.

Loin:Loin chops. Pan seared or cooked on a hot bbq, cook them pink in the middle and rest for as long as you cook them.

Leg: Available on the bone, off the bone and rolled or even as leg steaks if you want a quick alternative to beef steak.

Shank: The bottom of the leg. Three hours, low oven, red wine or tomatoes. Falls off the bone. Almost impossible to get wrong.

Shoulder: my favourite, and I’ll die on this hill. More fat and more work in the muscle than the leg, which means more flavour. Five hours at 140°C, rest for an hour, no fuss, then either carve, or even shred with 2 forks, for pulled lamb.

Breast:The cut that fell out of fashion which I really think shouldn’t have. Rolled, stuffed and slow-roasted or cooked long and slow crisped up hard at the end. Very cheap, very good.

Becca’s Portland Princesses

Now, the new arrivals … Becca (Leo’s better half!) has recently joined the business after an 8.5 year probation period and bearing the next generation of McCourts, bringing with her also her love of Portland sheep.

If you don’t know the breed, they are a small, tan-faced, horned sheep from the Isle of Portland in Dorset, and they are about as far from commercial farming as it’s possible to get!

Some facts, so you can see what Leo will be dealing with (do not fear, Becca’s previous job as a farm vet has her suitably qualified to assist on the farm too):

• They’re tiny. A Portland ewe is around 35–40kg. A modern, so-called commercial ewe is nearly double that.

• They usually have one lamb. Yes, not two, not three. One.

• The lambs are born a foxy red and turn cream over the first few months.

• Both ewes and rams have horns – the rams’ curl round in heavy spirals.

• They very nearly disappeared. The last of them left Portland in 1920 and by the time the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) stepped in in 1974 there were 86 breeding ewes left in the world. They’re still on the RBST watchlist as “At Risk”.

• It’s said that George III made a point of having Portland mutton served to him when he visited Weymouth, which tells you how good the flavour is.

Now while these little rare breed beauties won’t have the highest net output when compared to more popular and modern breeds, what we are going to try using these girls for is managing hillier and less productive areas of our own farm and other farm land which we rent. Because they are a more primitive hill breed they tend to be able to thrive on lower quality forage and tend to have fewer issues with sore feet too.

Anyway, this is an experiment, which we will keep you posted on and we look forward to playing a small part in making this breed slightly less rare!

For British Lamb Week, these would be Leo’s top picks

• Best end rack: the one to roast if you want people to be impressed.

• Loin chops: the fastest good lamb dinner in our shop.

• Leg on the bone: Sunday sorted, or ask us to butterfly it for the barbecue.

• Lamb mince: shepherd’s pie weather is closer than you think.