Serving Lamb For Easter? Local Butcher Offers Shopping, Preparation Tips
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - If you gave up meat for Lent, the Easter dinner might well include a big lamb feast.
And a top butcher in the Reading Terminal Market offered KYW Newsradio some ideas on how to shop for and prepare it.
LaDivisa Meats has your lamb, ideal for a roast, on the grill, bone-in, boned and rolled or butterflied.
"The most popular cut, hands down, is a leg of lamb, just because it feeds a large group," says chef and charcuterie guru Nick Macri at LaDivisa.
He recommends cooking at a high heat initially. That way, he says, you'll serve a wider audience, including those who like well-done edges, along with others who prefer a nice rosy pink middle:
"Start your oven off super, super hot - 550 degrees if possible - get a nice golden brown crust on it, and then drop the temperature down to 225 degrees, and let it slow roast, until you hit your desired internal temperature. For a leg, I like to go 145."
Macri sources his lamb from Jamison Farm in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where they had a 100% natural diet and free range lifestyle:
"There's no meatpackers or distributors in between. It's just us and the farm, and the customer, in the end."
Macri buys whole lambs, and then breaks them down to offer legs, shoulders, ribs, chops, shanks and neck:
"We like to tell everybody we have every part of the lamb, just not all of the time."
