Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

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> Australia and New Zealand have Western traditional aesthetics, Lamb and mutton are common here. What changed here ?

In my personal experience, mutton is not common in contemporary Australia. My local supermarkets (Woolworths and Coles) stock lamb, but I don’t remember either of them ever selling mutton. Maybe some specialty butchers might stock it, I don’t know, there isn’t much culture of eating it among the younger generations. That said, I imagine if I went back in a time machine to the 1950s or earlier, it would be much easier to find mutton in Australia.

Only time - that I can recall - ever eating “mutton” was in India - and I’ve been told that a lot of Indian “mutton” isn’t actually mutton, it is goat. You can buy goat meat here, most supermarkets don’t, but I’ve seen it in specialty butchers

It's common enough in sheep grazing areas.

I grew up in Australia with mutton making up 90% of my meat intake, as we slaughtered our own merino wethers (so not the breeds of lamb raised for eating).

The local butchers would also have a decent stock of different cuts, particularly things like neck chops for stews. Numbers of sheep around are lower now, so that may have limited things a little.

I also think hogget is equally as or more common than lamb in city butchers. Some of those chops are huge and have a nice tang.

Can confirm.

Most part of southern India, 'mutton' refers to goat meat. Sheep or Lamb have to be specified specially.

OMG, every time we visit Grandma we hear the stories about the difference between Lamb and Mutton and that that, actually, everything we buy these days in Mutton and they stopped labeling it mutton because Lamb is more expensive. And nothing is as good at it used to be.

Agreed, I remember growing up in country WA and we would have mutton as it was a cheaper option afaik, but it’s almost impossible to get these days - all lamb.

I can get mutton from my local Inala butchers earlier this month, slow cooked for a full day. I never though they were specialty.

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