An Abundance Of Lamb

At the moment we have a plentiful supply of lamb. We seem to have a few too many of them running around and as the conditions are fairly dry at the moment we made the decision  recently to  butcher two of the whethers to replenish our freezer supply.
A couple of days before we were due to  butcher a young ewe caught her leg somewhere and unfortunately smashed her leg badly and we had to butcher  her as well.

We did all three sheep early one morning to beat  the heat and flies, and then hung them in the cool  room for about 4 days to  tenderize and add flavour.
We  processed all three sheep, mainly cutting into chops(as that's what we seem to use  the most of). a few roasts and cuts for  casseroles and soups, as well as meals of offal(hearts,livers and kidneys)
we also  often cut chops off the legs as we just adore those lovely big round chops( a bit of Tuscan lamb seasoning and I am in heaven.)

The next day, we decided to bone out two of the larger legs of lamb as  I needed to top up my supply of meat sauce in the pantry.(sometimes, we  can soup, sometimes meat sauce or meatballs and other times we make sausages)

We then ground the meat on the coarse blade of our meat grinder.

The  ground meat was then browned, along with garlic, onions and capsicum and all placed into a big pot  .
I added about 5 quarts of  pre-canned tomatoes, , dried rosemary, salt and papper, tomato paste, red wine and cooked this  for about  an hour until it thickened, deepened in colour and developed  that rich tomato flavour.

This amount roughly fills about 19 pint jars.

I then wipe the rims of these jars with a paper towel dipped in vinegar, place my warmed slightly flats on and seal finger tight  with the rings.
These are then placed in two layers into my pressure canner with a rack between the layers.

I then  greased both edges(lid and canner) with vaseline, locked the lid down and  processed the jars for  75 minutes at 15 Lbs pressure(for my altitude).

After processing and  depressurizing back to  zero, I removed the lid,removed the jars and allowed to cool  overnight on a towel on the table out of draughts.

The next day, I removed the rings, checked the seals, washed the jars , labelled the lids and stored away in the pantry. I also washed  and dried the rings and stored them away in their storage box with all the thousands of other rings.
A few days later  we went to my Mum's 90 th birthday celebrations,  so I decided to make a couple of quick lasagna's using my canned meat sauce to have for lunch the day after the party to help feed the overflow of quests that were staying at My Brother's house..

It is just so handy to be able to grab a few of these  for a dish like this or a quick heat and pour over cooked pasta.

I have made  lasagna a couple of times now with the canned meat sauce and it works really well. I will use this  often as lasagna is always a quick and easy  meal for a crowd.
We also make this using turkey  instead of the lamb and it works equally as well.
The freezer is now lovely and full, but it does empty surprisingly fast  as we pass  some on to family  and friends.
It good to know that at least we have a really good meat supply that  we can depend on.
So until we meet again,
take care,
Cheers
Jane.