Recipe 25: Lamb sauce base

Following on from the success of my red wine base, I’m adapting Tom Kerridge’s lamb sauce base recipe to the one you see here.  This one takes more time overall than the red wine base but still good to do for lamb recipes. Smells lovely too.

The recipe calls for lamb bones but I've used some rather bony and fatty lamb ribs instead (the Morrisons couldn't supply me with lamb bones!). Be sure to cool the sauce afterwards so that you can easily scoop off the fat that rises to the surface...

I just did a third but with these measures,  you get about 3/4 litre.

Ingredients:

2 litres chicken stock	1 onion, chopped
1kg lamb bones, chopped up	2 celery sticks, chopped
½ bunch of rosemary	Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oven to 180⁰c and roast the lamb for about 40 minutes so that it’s nice and brown. Add the bones, stock, onion and celery to a pot and simmer for one or two hours to reduce by at least a third. Remove the pan from the heat and add the rosemary to infuse, uncovered for 30 minutes.

Pass the stock through a fine sieve (with muslin if you have it) and leave to cool completely, allowing you to remove any fat congealed on the surface. Now you can use it for lamb stock or to reduce it down for a sauce (see Recipe 26).

Keep for up to 3 days in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer – use those little gin miniature bottles from flights to store in handy-sized portions.

Today’s learning:

Once you’ve had lamb chops, or any meat off the bone, don’t be lazy with them bones! Make a sauce base out of them. I’ve always used a chicken carcass this way, so about time I got in the way of doing this with lamb to make a tasty stock or even better sauce.

Recipe adapted from: Kerridge, T. (2013). Proper Pub Food. Bath: Absolute Press.