Lamb’s Head Soup

Disclaimer…these pictures may be just a tad graphic, don’t say I didn’t warn you. My friend Jenni from culinary school is a member of Stillman’s Farm meat CSA. Each month, she picks up her share of assorted of beef, pork, lamb and/or chicken products, delivered straight from the farm. During her last pick up, the kind folks at Stillman’s asked her if she wanted any extra goodies, such as bones for stock, to which Jenni naturally replied ‘totally, I’m a culinary school student’. Upon hearing that, the Stillman’s folks dug deep into their bag of tricks and offered her a lamb’s head, an offer which she wisely and thankfully accepted.

Back in mid-August, the wife and I celebrated my birthday with a fantastic dinner at EVOO, a restaurant in our neighborhood that highlights locally sourced ingredients and features a menu that changes daily based on what’s fresh and available. One of the dishes we enjoyed that night was fatefully, lamb’s head soup. I had told Jenni about this meal and after a thoroughly uninspired internet search for lamb’s head cooking methods, she decided to call the restaurant to ask them how they make this dish, information that they happily divulged to her, most likely because no one has ever, nor ever will ask them such a question again. Ever the thoughtful culinary school student, Jenni invited the wife and I over, knowing that we’d jump on the chance to partake in such a unique cooking opportunity.  With camera and appetite in tow, we made our way over to Jenni’s house yesterday afternoon and began the process of turning a whole animal’s head into  something so wonderfully tasty that I’d come to wonder why you never see such an item in the meat counter of your local megamart.

Here’s Lamby (we decided to personalize the head by giving him a name) in all of his glory, just as he looked when he was handed over to Jenni. I like the orange sticker of authenticity, indicating that this is in fact a lamb head:

Lamby looks even creepier once the plastic is removed…you can really make out his tongue and teeth now:

We began the soup by searing a few cubes of miscellaneous lamb kabob meat that we just happened to have, figuring that additional caramelized brown bits in the soup would not be a bad thing. After browning the meat, it was removed from the pan and we caramelized some carrots and celery:

Next, we deglazed the pan with some red wine, then added some onions that Jenni had caramelized earlier. For the braising liquid, we wound up using an entire bottle of pinot noir and some water, giving us enough liquid to cover the lamb’s head about halfway. We also added a bit of tomato paste to the mix:

We brought the braising liquid to a boil, then covered the pot and placed it into a 325 degree oven and allowed it to cook until the meat was literally falling off of the head. We flipped the head over during cooking to allow both sides of it to cook in the braising liquid. Here’s what Lamby looked like after about 3 hours of cooking in the oven:

After allowing Lamby to cool for a few minutes, we began to pick him apart and shred all of his tasty head meat, which was so insanely tender and flavorful I nearly cried. At this point, we could very easily separate the jaw bones from the rest of the skull….

…which allowed easy access to the delectable tongue…

…which would be even more tasty once the thick and inedible outer membrane had been removed:

The skull was too thick to split in half with any of the tools that we had on hand so we had to use a paring knife and flat-head screwdriver and dig in through a hole in the back of the skull in order to extract Lamby’s tasty brain:

Lamb brain (actually, brain period) was totally new for me. It was actually very mild in flavor…it tasted surprisingly like lamb and didn’t really have any ‘off’ flavor. Consistency-wise, I’d say that it was very close to pate and it actually tasted really good and I think increased my IQ by a good 10 points or so.

After removing Lamby from the braising liquid, we strained out the aromatics and added back the shredded meat. We also added some finely diced carrot, celery and fennel, and some reduced veal stock. We allowed this mixture to reduce a bit in order to concentrate its flavors and thicken up the soup a bit. When the soup was ready, we seasoned it and ladled it over some homemade gnocci:

Holy crap was this stuff good. To say that the meat was tender would be an understatement; it was also really flavorful and rich, as was the soup itself. The beauty of this dish is that you could serve it to anyone and tell them that it was just homemade lamb soup and they’d never know that it had such a ghastly origin. Now if anyone asks, I can proudly tell them that I know how to work with a lamb’s head. Thanks Jenni for thinking of us and for hosting such a fun night! Also, big thanks to the folks at EVOO for the recipe information and inspiration.