Ground lamb is one of our favorites and lamb kofta is our go to recipe. It’s basically middle eastern style meatballs that make the traditional meatballs seem like Spaghettios. We serve it with turmeric rice, homemade kefir sauce, and if we want to add a bit more, we include sautéed peppers, onions, and fresh hummus. It’s a fairly easy meal to whip up and the boys squeal with excitement over this dinner. The fattiness of the lamb makes it moist and buttery. If you've never had lamb, or think you don't like the taste of it, you may have had some that wasn't cooked well. The key with lamb is to not overcook it. Lamb should be slightly pink inside, even in this recipe. Overcooking lamb is a mistake. In our American, fast food, poor quality food culture, we've been trained meat is only safe if its been cooked to oblivion. We pull all the flavorful, nutritious fat out and cook that lean hunk of meat until it is dry and flavorless. There is a lot to say for good meat sourced from a well cared for animal. The Why behind what we Eat... Don't listen to me, do your own research and look into the of the popular dietary recommendations. A lot of times there is another side to the argument, and depending on an individual's health concerns, sometimes what is healthier for one person, may be different that what is the popular recommendation for most people. The Fatty MEatIf you’re one that’s still on the lean meat only diet, I’d challenge you to look at the other side of the argument, because there definitely is one. Good quality, pastured, grass fed fat is loaded with nutrients and we’re fully comfortable with consuming it. I may deny my kids Oreos, but they can have as much lamb fat as they want. We use the leftover fat up, adding it to rice or cooking eggs. None of it goes to waste, and the flavor it adds takes the food to a whole new level. The White RiceI know...everyone says rice is bad, no one should eat it, if you do eat it, only consume brown rice, etc. I love white rice and always have. Much of the world couldn't survive without it, and as much as it may surprise people, I do question completely eliminating a entire food source that seems to have been provided by God to sustain life. I tend to ask "why," to these types of recommendations, and usually they stem from something we've messed up with either how we grow or prepare a food. Rice seems to be one of those things. It is better soaked and drained before use, and with the high arsenic counts for rice, white rice actually seems to be the better choice. Again, we try to source higher quality rice, and while I always plan to presoak, I rarely remember to actually do it. Where we choose to avoid rice is in more processed things like brown rice flour, cereals, rice crackers, and the like. I tend to think the overconsumption of rice probably comes from eating too many gluten free snacks and cookies than a bowl of rice at dinner, but that is just my uneducated, non-medical opinion. We add turmeric for the little bit of flavor, color, and health benefits when we cook rice, but it could be easily left out. The Raw KefirWe drink only raw milk. It is the only way my family can consume milk and not get sick. Raw milk in Ohio cannot be purchased at the store, sold in a restaurant, or technically sold anywhere. How you get access to it is by joining a herd share, something I wish we did years ago. Basically, we own part of a cow, which we pay someone else to care for, and we choose to use our cow by consuming the milk. Yeah, it seems like a real backwards way to drink milk, but that's what we have to do. Kefir is fermented dairy, a similar concept to yogurt, however it doesn't taste like it. I make it daily by pouring my raw milk into a jar of kefir grains, leaving it on the counter for a day, and then straining it. What I'm left with is a effervescent, sour tasting, probiotic rich liquid. We use this to make the sauce. Kefir can be purchased at the store, or you could use a plain yogurt. If you are using a store bought option, you may end up with a slightly milder tasting sauce than compared to using a raw kefir. While we use very close to farm, home raised, high quality ingredients, this recipe will still taste good with completely store bought ingredients. If you want to take it to the next level, try some of the above suggestions, but it is still worth it even if you can't access grass-fed lamb or raw kefir. Please, just don't overcook that lamb. We adapted this recipe out of a cookbook called the Ethical Omnivore and highly recommend it. Not only does it have different recipes for all types of meat, it also explains a lot about raising animals sustainably and cooking nose-to-tail.
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