Sheep, souping of

[fivemack]

I made Sunday lunch for mobbsy, sonicdrift and my housemate-brother Ben; 1.3kg of lovely leg of lamb from the local butcher, rubbed with garlic and thyme and salt and olive oil and with a whole bulb of garlic cut in half horizontally and roasted under it for tasty caramelised-garlic goodness, gratin dauphinois so that I could indulge my desire to peel potatoes into non-existence with my clever swivelly potato peeler (this turned out to be unspeakably tedious, though to produce potato nubs of bizarre geometric shapes; the cheese-slicing blade on the grater works better), green beans, roast butternut squash with sage. Afterwards, a chocolate pudding (standard four-ounce-of-everything chocolate cake mix, add raisins, bake in a long thin thing rather than a cake tin) served with vanilla ice cream from the shop. It was all well-received.

Now I have a large lamb leg-bone. There's clearly three sandwiches of meat on it, which can come off into sandwiches; then I have a big bone, and given bones I usually contemplate boiling them and making soup. I have carrots, parsnips, broccoli and leeks to put in soup; the caramelised garlic was so nice that I'd happily caramelise another garlic, but I'm not sure how well it works as a soup ingredient.

The last sheep stock I made was very thin and rather greasy; can I have some advice on the making of sheep soup? Something, probably one of the feasts from papersky's The King's Peace, makes me think pearl barley should be involved; I have pearl barley, but the pack says it must be boiled for an hour before it softens, and surely it would have to go in after the soup is blended, and at this point we'd be eating soup at ten after an evening of stressful soup synthesis.

Comments

[redbird]

Can you cook the barley in parallel to other things, and then add already-softened barley to your soup?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I don't know: I suspected that the grease-reducing effect is a consequence of grease being absorbed by softening barley, in which case presumably it wouldn't work in advance.

Though perhaps the diners would be so filled with Tasty Barley Joy that they don't notice the sheep-grease ...

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

I like to cook a load of pearl barley at once, then freeze it in individual portions, stew, suitable for the adding to of.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

My inclination would be to make an unblended soup/casserole/whatever, and put the barley in right at the beginning. An hour isn't that long to leave soup simmering. Lots of veg should help with grease, I'd think, though I'm vegetarian so inexperienced as to the quanities of lipids that a sheep contains.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

oh, and: if you have too much time on your hands, and go the long way round and make stock seperately first (simmering bones &c with few veg and herbs for ages, and then straining), I think you may be able to cool it and then skim off some of the grease. I don't know how much flavour this loses you or how fiddly it is.

[helenbr.livejournal.com]

I think I would do it like this. Make it two separate operations - make stock one night and then soup another. It shouldn't need too many ages and ages to stock it and I don't usually even bother with the veg and herbs, though that does seem to be what the chefs always recommend and might help against your greasiness. The fat will separate out when it's cold into a layer on the top that can be skimmed off with a spoon fairly easily. We have some lamb stock in the freezer that we made like this at the weekend, though not enough for soup sadly as it's all sounding rather tempting.

Alternatively, you leave the meat for the soup rather than for sandwiches and make scotch broth with the meat, the bones and some pearl barley.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Well, what I do is I put the bone into a big enough pan, with enough water or vegetable stock (water that has previously been around boiling vegetables) and then add a handful of pearl barley, and onions, and root vegetables, and garlic, and a leek, and any meat stock or gravy there might be, or a dash of soy sauce, and then boil it for two or three hours, and re-heat it for twenty minutes every time I want to eat some.

But that's cawl, it doesn't get liquidised. Having said that, I did it once, it was odd and I didn't like it as much, but it blended fine, including the pearl barley.

In The King's Peace they were not blending anything, as it would have taken some irritatingly impressive magic.

Barley

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

Hello! I just noticed you had added me as a friend!

Pearl barley: I have been experimenting with it recently. It says an hour but I've found it takes more like 45 minutes to be acceptable, which was a relief. It may depend on how thoroughly it is dried, so my experience may not be indicative. I cooked it in water and then added it to soup. Maybe if you want to absorb the grease you could part-cook it in water first?