I'm making rack of lamb tonight. I got the rack at a local farmer's market and it was a bit less butchered than I expected. I can (and did) trim it myself, but there seems to be a lot of meat embedded in the large amount of fat I trimmed off the top of the ribs. I'm not really sure what its proper name is ("rib meat"?), so here's a couple pictures to make it clear:
I'm talking about the large slab of fat and meat in my hand in the second picture. As far as I can tell, it's usually just discarded, but there seems to be a good deal of meat there, and it was expensive, so I'd hate to just toss it. I'm fairly patient and good at separating the fat and meat on membranes, so I can probably isolate a good portion of the meat, if necessary.
Is there anything I can do/make to avoid throwing out so much good meat?
For the record, I got about 12 oz of usable meat out of this. Didn't weigh the fat, but probably 20-24 oz.
Best Answer
I always save all my scraps to make stock. I'm not sure what you would do with lamb stock, but it would probably make a good sauce to use on lamb. The fat that renders out is also useful for future cooking of whatever it came from (duck fat for duck confit, for example).
I just throw all the scraps into a slow cooker with celery, carrot, and onion (veggies are optional) and let it cook for a day (or two). You can pick out the meat if you like (after a day it will be easy to separate) and use it for anything you might use shredded lamb for (pot pie, shepherd's pie, etc.).
I use rendered chicken or turkey fat instead of butter for making pot pie dough, to cook more chicken in, or for matzo balls, and beef fat instead of butter for making gravy, replacing the butter in a beurre manié (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beurre_mani%C3%A9).