Lamb chops are the special ingredient to make the delicious dish that many people in different countries love to enjoy. It represents the level of cooking and enjoying. What is lamb chops and why does it represent some level? And how is about the nutrition that it can contribute to human health?
You may see that if the lamb chops are served mainly in the famous restaurant in some places, the lamb meat in general is served more popular. Lamb or lamb chops are the meat from sheep. It is type of red meat and is considered one of expensive types of meat in our menu.
The outlook of lamb could be compared to duck and beef, but its structure is finer, softer and more elastic than the others two. The color of the meat is from light pink to red with a little white from fat. Lamb contains high level of nutrients as protein, niacin, vitamin B6, B12, iron…Besides, the fat and cholesterol level in lamb are low.
Lamb as meat from different areas
Lamb is an easiest memorized way to call meat from sheep. However, it could be distinct from different areas.
Commonly, lamb could be used for both young sheep (under 1 year old) and its meat. Meat from the sheep that is older than 1 year is known as hogget, and hogget is also used for the sheep at this age (except North America). The adult sheep is still called sheep, and their meat is knows as mutton.
Differently in the US, lamb is used for sheep meat generally with no age distinction. Hogget and mutton are not used popularly there.
In south Asia countries, mutton is mostly used for goat meat than sheep.
In some countries of Europe, especially Spain and Greece, they use 4-6 weeks old lamb as milk-fed lamb. The Australian uses lamb under seven months old as sucker lamb. In many countries of northern hemisphere, the there to five months old lambs which are sold before July 1 is usually known as spring lamb. And in these place lamb meat in general in which there are lamb chops served more popular than other places.
Lamb as food
Lamb is used as food widely around the world, especially in Europe, Mediterranean, Middle East, Australia, Central Asia, China, North Africa and some countries of America.
The meat will be distinguished to different parts (such as shoulder, rack, loin, leg, shank, flank…) to use in different types of dish. Normally, lamb is more tenderly compared with hogget and mutton. It is usually cooked slightly to make tasty dishes. The hogget and mutton are tougher, flavor is stronger than lamb and so they are more suitable for stews.
Lamb is joined abundantly in many countries cuisine. For some examples: roasted lamb leg is considered as Australian national dish, in Indonesia lamb is popularly used to make curries, lamb is popular chose for barbacoa dish in Mexico, lamb is joined to many traditional dishes of Northern Europe…And thousands of dishes from other countries that use lamb and mutton as the main ingredient.
Although this type of meat is very popular in the world, even in Asia, it is less popular in North America especially the US. It is accounted per capita per year that there is only 400 g of the sheep meat was consumed in US, and number of people who have tried this meat is not over half of the US population.
