- [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided in part by the RE Synergy Foundation, content for the sustainable world; G&C Foods, quality at every turn; Pittsburgh Spice and Seasoning Company, making life taste better; The Allen family, Robert Ashley, Carroll, and Fred; and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - I'm the son of a butcher.

- You might be a son of a butcher, but I'm the original butcher.

- Some ask me, "What is the meat industry to you?"

For me, it starts at a place where my family runs a grocery, butcher shop and a catering business.

And, sure it's about the business side of things, but for me, at its core, it's a story about relationships.

(upbeat music) (lively music) (lamb thuds) Welcome back, everyone.

Today we're gonna start by making a heart-healthy meatball.

And, this is not gonna be just any typical meatball.

This is gonna be a meatball without gluten, without any binders, without any breadcrumbs.

And so, stick with us and check this out.

So, we're gonna start by breaking down this lamb here.

So, we're gonna remove the leg of lamb, (saw scraping) and then we're gonna cut the shoulder away from the loin.

(saw scraping) So, there's the ribs and the loin here.

And here's the shoulder and the neck piece that we're gonna concentrate on for this project.

So, the reason we're gonna select the shoulder is it's gonna be about like 80% lean, 20% fat when we're doing this product.

Obviously, for the loin of a lamb, you know, that's a high dollar piece of meat.

So, we want to keep that to sell for lamb chops.

And then, leg of lamb's highly sought after, too.

So, we'll go ahead and split this and show you how you do the leg of lamb.

(saw scraping) And, for here we're gonna take a lamb end roast.

This will be the back part of the loin.

(saw scraping) That'll make a nice bone-in lamb loin roast.

Do the same thing with this side.

(saw scraping) And, we're gonna take these lamb shanks off here as well.

If you kinda look how that comes down through here, this is where we're gonna break that.

All right, here's one of our lamb shanks.

I'm gonna trim this up just a little bit.

Here's what our leg lamb's gonna look like.

There's our other lamb shank.

Trim a little bit of this off and any of these trimmings and stuff, we're gonna go ahead and use that in our meatballs.

There's our other leg.

Now, we'll get to this front shoulder.

I'm actually gonna make this a boneless front shoulder here.

As I'm doing this, I'm trying to run my knife, just fall it right along the edge of that bone.

That way I'm making sure I'm not leaving too much meat on the bone and leaving it right on to product here.

All right.

All right.

Now, we got both of our lamb shoulders.

And, I'm gonna show you if we were gonna do like a lamb shoulder roast or lamb shoulder steaks, I'll show you a little bit about what that looks like.

And, if you see this yellowish stuff, that's part of the neck, so, you wanna make sure you cut that out of there.

My dad always calls that bubble gum.

He said if you ever put that in your mouth and chew on it, you'll be chewing on a long time.

Be like bubblegum.

So, he just says, "Hey, make sure you cut that bubblegum outta there."

All right.

And then, this is similar too, if anyone's ever processed any deer, there's almost like a line that comes across here.

We're gonna pull that shoulder apart.

That'd be the same with the pork butts.

And, that would be your lamb shoulder.

Lot of guys would just square that off, so it would look like this.

If I wanted to take this and make lamb shoulder steaks, I would just take it on the saw and cut it across this way.

But, today we're just gonna turn this into lamb meatballs.

(lively music) - [Narrator] The concept of combining ground meat with other ingredients to form compact balls can be traced back to ancient civilizations.

In ancient Rome, meatballs, known as isicia amentata, were enjoyed by the upper class.

- Alright, so we took this over to the saw and we made the cut.

We removed the ribs from the loin, as you'll see there.

So, these are gonna be our lamb chops and this would be a our lamb rack of rib.

Now, we're gonna come back with these and we're gonna go ahead and bone these out because this is what we're gonna use to put in our lamb meatballs.

I'm just trying to trim off some of that outside fat.

My father and I are kind of particular on that.

We don't necessarily like a lot of that back fat in the product.

With the lamb fat, you get a little bit different texture than you do with pork fat.

So, that's why we typically like to remove that.

But again, we're trying to target 20% fat, 80% lean.

So, I'm gonna try to make sure I am leaving some fat on this lamb.

If you get your meat block too lean, then it'll tend have the tendency to be tough.

So, that's why we wanna make sure we got proper ratios of lean meat to fat.

Yeah, as part of the slaughter process, you are gonna end up with a little bit of blood clot material down near the throat and on the shoulder.

So, that, just make sure you're careful and get that trimmed out.

The stamp that you're seeing on the meat, that's a federally inspected.

They gotta put a stamp on each primal.

So, we go ahead and trim that out.

It is food-grade ink, but we still trim it out in case you get any color that would happen to show up in the product.

We have had that happen before or we had a customer say something about having that ink in his beef burger.

So, we wanna make sure we don't have any issues.

I could also do lamb shanks off of the front legs if you wanted to as well.

If we weren't putting it into, you know, value added product or further processed product, we could just sell those as whole shanks.

I am gonna go ahead and bone these ribs out as well.

So, when I do these ribs, I'm gonna make sure I skin the outside of them first and get all that meat off and then I'll go back and go in between the ribs and get the rest of it.

If you ever wonder why you don't have lamb bacon, that's because this is what would typically be your bacon and by the time that is gonna cook down, it's gonna be too small to even get any bacon off of and mess with it.

So, most people would just typically leave that on your ribs and make sure you had some meatier lamb ribs.

So, I did wanna let you guys know for reference, the size of this lamb that we brought out was 71 pounds.

That's pretty typical for what we're gonna get from our local products.

Some people like 'em a little bit smaller, some people bigger.

This is about kind of right in the middle, I think, where we're pretty happy with the size.

(lively music) - [Narrator] Lamb is a high-quality protein source, containing all nine essential amino acids.

It is particularly rich in iron and vitamin B12, which can help prevent anemia and support red blood cell formation.

- All right, so, we finished trimming this up, and making the pieces we wanted to.

So, again, we got our leg of lamb right here.

This is gonna be a bone-in leg of lamb.

Here's our lamb shoulders.

These are gonna be our lamb and roast.

Got two lamb shanks.

This is gonna be our lamb chops.

And then, these are the pieces that are gonna go in the bone barrel, neck and the legs.

And then, this is our product we're gonna use for making our lamb meatballs.

This is an 80% lean, 20% fat.

And, I think that looks like a pretty good mixture.

(lively music) (players chattering) (ball pops) - Hustle!

Get there, get there.

- Good boy, Gary.

- Okay, now we're gonna grind the lamb, the 100% lamb product, and we're gonna grind it through our 3/16ths blade two times.

(grinder whirring) And, we'll go back in for a second time.

(grinder whirring) Okay, that's two times through with the lamb.

Alright, now we're gonna measure out our seasonings and start mixing these meatballs.

Now, I'm gonna talk to you guys a little bit about some of the ingredients that we're gonna add to our heart-healthy meatballs.

The heart-healthy meatballs was inspired by my wife.

She was taking a drink and she had lots of turmeric and ginger and garlic and some cayenne, and she would make a liquid drink out of this.

And, she had me try that.

And when I tasted, I kind of got a little bit of heartburn from having that cayenne in there.

And so, I got to brainstorming, I said, "You know, I'm gonna make a meatball with these ingredients in it, with these anti-inflammatory ingredients in it."

So, I'm gonna read you a little bit about what's in some of these.

So, these are wedding soup meatballs that we have in stock here at O'Neill's Quality Foods.

We buy this product in 'cause the meatball's being so small, It's a very tedious thing to do for us.

But, some of the ingredients that is in your typical commercial meatball would be, we have beef and water, textured soy protein.

So, you have soy protein concentrates, caramel color, there's egg in this product, there is dehydrated onion, there's breadcrumbs.

And so, a lot of these products, you know, people wanna stay away from, especially if someone is gluten-free, they're looking for a gluten-free diet.

Now, we felt we could offer an alternative to that in a heart-healthy meatball.

So, we'll go through some of the ingredients that we're gonna add.

And, the reason I'm calling it a heart-healthy meatball is because we're using several anti-inflammatory ingredients in this product.

And so, that's gonna help your heart.

It can help your digestion and extra things like that.

So, we'll start with the ingredients that is gonna help with the anti-inflammatory.

That's gonna be our turmeric here.

And, the turmeric, they said it works best.

The turmeric is good as an anti-inflammatory, but also, works best when it's companioned with the black pepper.

So, these two working in combination actually make it more available for your blood system to, you know, move it throughout the body.

And so, we're gonna make sure that we pair those two together.

Also, in this product we have ginger, we have cayenne pepper.

So, those are the kind of the main ingredients.

And we also, have garlic.

So, all of those would be the anti-inflammatory ones.

And then we have to have the salt in the product to help with the preservation.

Now, this is a fully cooked meatball and so, it has no curing salt in it or anything.

So basically, if we're selling out of our refrigerated case, we have seven days to sell this product or we can vacuum seal it and put it in our freezer case.

So, this is a fully cooked but it's not a cured product.

We're gonna have brown sugar, we're gonna have some Italian seasoning in this product.

We have some onion and then some paprika to kind of offset the color of the turmeric to keep that meatball from looking so yellow.

So, that's the main ingredients that we're gonna add into our meatball.

(lively music) - [Narrator] Early recipes included in some of the earliest known Arabic cookbooks generally featured seasoned lamb rolled into orange-sized balls and glazed with egg yolk and sometimes saffron.

- Okay, now dad's gonna help me mix these meatballs.

So then, we're gonna start with our 100% lamb product.

(bin thumping) Okay, first we'll add salt and we'll add the brown sugar.

We'll add the garlic, Italian seasoning, and we'll add a little bit of cayenne.

That's some onion.

Why don't we go ahead and blend that?

(mixer whirring) - Perfect.

- Okay, we'll add some turmeric and some black pepper.

We'll add the ginger and Hungarian paprika.

(mixer whirring) Then, we'll add the distilled water.

(mixer whirring) How's it look?

- Pretty dilacious.

(mixer whirring) - Go ahead and run her out?

- Yep.

(grinder whirring) (lively music) - [Narrator] In China, eaters have enjoyed Four Joy Meatballs since the Qin Dynasty.

And, we know that ancient Romans made meatballs often, thanks to the first century cookbook Apicius that still survives today.

However, the meatball is thought to have originated in ancient Persia.

- Hi, ya'll.

I'm just gonna show you a little bit of what AJ had mixed up here for his lamb meatballs.

This is pretty much the old way of doing our meatballs.

We do have a bigger machine now that does this pretty much automatically.

We still have to round them, but you gotta pack 'em pretty full.

That way they don't have any... And, if you wanna roll 'em, that makes 'em look prettier.

The older I get, the lazier I get, so I just kind of, like, leave 'em go.

If you keep 'em flat like this, they're not gonna roll off your table or your plate.

This works real good for home use.

For us being a little more commercial, we need a little more quickness, I guess what I want to say, a little more efficient, but it doesn't take long to knock out a bunch of meatballs.

But then, we also will do a patty.

This other ice cream scoop is like a four-ounce patty.

These meatballs here are two-ounce.

Basically do the same thing, pack it in your scoop and bring it out and just make your own patties.

These are pretty nice looking meatballs, though.

Can tell they're nice and lean.

Okay, we have the meatballs all rolled up.

We did a few patties there for sandwiches, So, got her pretty ready.

We're gonna throw her in the oven.

(lively music) We wanna make sure we're at least at 156 and we exceeded that, so we're ready to take them into the cooler.

- Alright, here we are to give these a taste test.

I made a special glaze.

This is a ginger teriyaki sauce with honey.

And, let's give it a try.

The first ones here that we're gonna sample are the 100% lamb.

(lively music) - Oh, it looks nice and juicy.

Has that little coarser, falling apart.

- I'm a son of a butcher.

- That's right.

(group laughs) (lively music continues) - And, that's all folks.

(laughs) (lively music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided in part by the RE Synergy Foundation, content for a sustainable world; G&C Foods, quality at every turn; Pittsburgh Spice and Seasoning Company, making life taste better; The Allen family, Robert, Ashley, Carol, and Fred; and viewers like you.