Meat From Sheep

Meat from sheep includes hogget and mutton as well as lamb. Debbie Kingsley explains

- Debbie Kingsley

We really love a bit of hogget. It’s our sheep meat of choice, and we struggle each year to keep enough for ourselves once our meat box customers have snaffled their share. So what is it and why is it increasing in popularity?

Lamb

Let’s start with the far more plentiful lamb; about 76,000 tonnes of lamb was bought in Great Britain in 2016 (to put that in perspective that’s a quarter of the beef and half the pork consumption). Everyone knows that lamb is meat from young sheep, and for the smallholder it can vary in age from around four months old (weaning age), although more normally it’s six months, but might be reared up to a year. Not everyone agrees with this broad age range definition though, because once lambs are weaned they are referred to as hoggs (not to be confused with hogs aka pigs), and the meat from these hoggs can be called hogget. But for many who rear and sell their own meat, if it’s under a year old, lamb it is and lamb it remains.

Lamb was rarely eaten in the UK until the middle of the 20th century; before then it was considered immature and mutton was the preferred sheep meat. But the tender lamb suits the quick cooking approaches of today’s busy household, and it is undeniably a fabulous meat, with lamb chops needing minimal cooking under a grill, on a griddle or in a frying pan. The meat is sweet and tender, and will have a decent level of fat.

Hogget