Sluttishly Savoury: Slow Roast Shoulder of Mutton

The Welsh blood in me calls for roast lamb to be eaten as often as possible, especially on Sundays when the scent of it roasting in the oven can soothe even my most delicate of weekend heads (hence it's known as Sunday Medicine in my house!). If you love lamb even half as much as I do then I urge you to try mutton it's older and more flavoursome version.  

Good mutton is hung for three weeks making it incredibly tender so you don't have to slow roast it but I have a bit of an obsession, okay a huge obsession, with pulled pork at the moment and so thought I would give a mutton version a go. Since I first tried this mutton recipe lamb hasn't had so much as a look in round mine. The flavours concentrate, the garlic and onions sweeten and the meat is so meltingly tender it just falls off the bone.  The beauty of this is that you could serve it as part of a traditional roast dinner or simply with pitta breads, homemade coleslaw and your favourite chilli sauce.

You'll need:

• 1 shoulder of mutton
• 2 peeled and roughly chopped carrots
• 4 onions peeled and quartered
• few sprigs of rosemary
• 12 cloves of garlic
• 2 glasses red wine
• sea salt 
• freshly ground black pepper

Make it!

1. Pre-heat your oven to 200C.  Put your mutton in a deep roasting tin and surround it with the onions and carrots. 
2. Using a sharp knife make some slits in the meat and put your garlic gloves and rosemary into them. Pour the wine into the tray, sprinkle the salt and pepper over the meat and cover with tin foil ensuring no steam will be able to escape.
3. Roast for 20 minutes then turn the oven right down to 130C and leave to gently cook for 6 hours.
4. After 6 hours the meat will be falling off the bone and the smells from the kitchen will have been making you want to gnaw your own arm off.  I like to remove the foil and give it a final 30 minutes uncovered to finish. 
5. Remove the meat from the pan.  There will be quite a lot of fat left with the juices so I tend to pour it all into a jug and let it separate before skimming the fat off and returning the juices to the pan with the veg.  Mash the veg into the juices to create a thick gravy.  You could strain it and reduce it further if you wish or thicken with a bit of flour mashed into a knob of butter if it needs it.