Lamb lovers

Savory chops find place on menu

By Jomay Steen, Journal staff | Friday, March 21, 2008

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VALE — It’s a hard-to-find South Dakota jewel of a dish, but Kathy Wood of Newell serves up grilled lamb chops to customers’ rave reviews. Processed, trimmed and cut by Tri-County Lockers of Newell, Wood seasons the no-fuss chops before grilling them to perfection.

The Last Call Bar in Vale recently began serving lamb on its dinner menu and may be one of the only restaurants in West River that serves the South Dakota entree to patrons. At a cost of $12 to $15 depending on cut, owners Kathy and Gilbert Wood thought lamb should have a prominent place on their menu.

“It is really good,” Kathy Wood said.

Without a complicated array of ingredients, the expert cook recently seasoned one side of the lamb chops with onion powder, garlic powder and garlic pepper before slapping them on the grill, closing the lid and waiting 5 to 6 minutes before looking at them. “You can use lemon pepper, too,” she said. “I don’t like using salt.”

“People will tell you, you can cook it like beef. You can, other than you can’t cook it in its own juices,” she said.

Like beef, lamb can be cooked to a well-done perfection or served rare, medium rare and medium. Exposed over the open flame, the meat fat will cook away, leaving a tender, smoky taste.

“That’s why it’s so good on the barbecue,” Wood said.

She also said that lean lamb is packed with more nutrients than many red meats. It’s a claim the American Sheep Industry Association of Englewood, Colo., backs up.

According to the association, American lamb is a nutritional powerhouse with a 3-ounce serving of lean lamb providing protein, niacin, iron, zinc and B vitamins all for just 176 calories and 76 milligrams of cholesterol.

But finding these tender cuts of lambs is a bit of a scavenger’s hunt.

“We’re the second largest sheep area in the country, but you can’t find good South Dakota lamb here,” Wood said.

South Dakota actually ranks fifth in the nation of sheep production with about 355,000 sheep in the state, according to the association.

But Mark Jarnecke of Tri-County Lockers in Newell agrees with Wood on its scarcity.

“It’s next to impossible,” he said of finding South Dakota lamb in the local grocery stores. Safeway stores have featured cuts of lamb, but not with any regularity, he said.

High prices pushed many shoppers to find more affordable cuts of meat, in turn causing a lack of demand for lamb and the budget-worthy mutton.

Yet, the lamb market thrived in other parts of the nation.

“It’s all shipped to the East Coast,” Wood said of the state-produced lamb. “What you find in Sam’s Club is from New Zealand. My husband blows a gasket every time he goes there and sees it.”

Kathy Wood is rooted in sheep country.

Her father worked for a man whose sheep ranch provided plenty of lamb and mutton for their dinner table. But it wasn’t until her mother was away from home one summer that Wood learned to cook this popular meat.

“I learned to cook lamb from an old Mexican cook. He couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Spanish. My mom was in summer school and a shearing crew was up from Old Mexico. It was the first time I had ever been around lamb,” she said.

The rancher would save wethers (castrated male sheep) for butchering after the large shearing crews arrived at the ranch. That summer, a ranch hand arrived at Wood’s door with a leg of lamb.

“Tell Cookie I need him at the house,” Wood told the man, sending him to find the Mexican cook, who was part of the shearing crew.

In a constant flow of Spanish, Cookie arrived to begin trimming off all of the fat from the leg of lamb with a butcher knife. He then communicated with the young Wood for paper towels and vinegar, which he sponged onto the meat.

He then directed more words at the young girl, miming and talking at the same time what he wanted for the roast.

“My mom had a big cupboard of spices, and I opened it up,” she said.

Inside, he found salt, pepper, onion salt, garlic and lemon pepper. He lightly seasoned the meat with each of the spices. Cookie then pantomimed to Wood a cradling gesture that she correctly interpreted as a meat rack to put into the roasting pan.

“He wanted a rack, because you don’t cook lamb in its own juices,” she said.

Cookie threw it in the oven, turned it on low and said “ready at noon” and out the door he went.

“It was ready at noon,” she said with a laugh.

Contact Jomay Steen at 394-8418 or jomay.steen@rapidcityjournal.com.