5 Ways of storing fresh mutton

When homesteaders have refrigeration, they may vacuum-seal fresh mutton cuts and store them in the freezer or refrigerator until it’s time to cook. But what if you lack electricity? In the event that the power goes out, you might wish to prepare a backup strategy. If you live off the grid, your access to electricity for freezers and refrigerators may be restricted.

In the past, before refrigeration or ubiquitous electricity, people would have to come up with inventive ways to prevent their fresh meat from deteriorating because, once your animal was butchered and chopped up, there was typically nowhere to go to buy fresh meat around the corner. I usually buy mutton from a mutton shop near me. But sometimes a lack of electricity might be a big issue.

What are some modern methods for preventing fresh lamb from rotting without access to power or refrigeration? Let’s start by taking a look at a few of the methods that people have used to preserve meat without power for many years.

Confit

Beginning with the lighter side of mutton, rillettes, confit, and terrines are some of the meat preparations that are more popular. Confit is the most traditional, well-known, and oldest of these treatments for soft meat. Although practically any type of meat can be used to make confit, mutton confit is the most popular variation.

By slowly cooking the meat in oil or its own fat, confit is used to preserve meat and occasionally vegetables. Confit can be kept for up to many months in a cool, dry environment.

Rillettes(Potted meat)

Rillettes, which build on the foundation of confit, is meat that has been cooked in the confit method, then shred or chopped, seasoned with salt and pepper, and then preserved in animal fats or oils like olive oil.

pâté

A pâté is similar to a confit, with the exception that it uses a ground mixture of organ and muscle meats as well as additional herbs and seasoning as desired. In contrast to the Gillette or plainer confit, this approach also includes butter.

Terrine
In terms of flavor, the terrine is the most intricate of the softer preserved meats. In that it is produced using both muscle and organ meat, as well as any necessary spices and herbs, the terrine is most comparable to the pâté. However, it is made with animal fat or oil rather than butter.

It is then put in a loaf-shaped mold, optionally covered in aspic gelatine, and cooked in a water bath before being stored or consumed.

Dehydrate
There are other alternatives to preserving meat with lard that doesn’t need electricity if you don’t want to do that. Dehydrating your beef is one technique to achieve this.

Depending on where in the world you are from, jerky or biltong may be more well-known to you. Both are similar in that they are various types of dried meat, but their origins and methods of preparation are from various regions of the world. South African biltong is made by marinating it in vinegar and spices to cure it and add more taste, then hanging it out to be air-dried to the desired texture. On the other hand, to make jerky, the meat is marinated in a sauce-like mixture of spices before being dried off.