Lamb has to be medium - a pink center. Once it gets beyond that, it starts getting too tough to chew. I make a jerk leg of lamb (recipe somewhere here or on my website) that comes out with the deepest meat medium-rare and the surface meat medium with a nice crispy exterior.

As far as duck goes, too long and it gets rubbery, too soon and it's not safe to eat. I usually cook duck thighs to the same temperature as chicken - 175 degrees.

You're not buying the right lamb! I've never had it get tough! :)

When I have lamb, it's usually chops and I've always had it served with a reddish-pink center.

Always cook lamb medium rare to rare....my mother and grandmother did. If you are cooking mutton then cook it more, but young lamb needs a gentle touch.
As for Pillog's remark on the right lamb...I suggest one person's tough is another's al dente.
I've sure had rare duck...but I do prefer it cooked medium...just a hint of pink.
But tuna.....I know just seared....but I really prefer it cooked longer.
Oysters and clams? Give them to me raw!

I have always preferred medium rare lamb. Your photo Olychick , looks perfect for me. That said I really don't mind if it's medium to well done either, as can happen all too frequently at a BBQ.

I don't like the rare way of cooking usually duck breasts. I have tried them but it didn't seem right to be eating such underdone meat from a bird. Had that 'ick' factor for me. I much prefer the confit way of low and slow, so the meat is tender and falling apart.

I don't like lamb at all, but Elery likes it medium rare. Duck I like medium, maybe a bit more done than that. Grandma used to roast them for hours, LOL. Tuna? Yeah, I know it's SUPPOSED to be rare, but I like that medium too.

Annie

Linda, I suppose you're right. I think it's tough if it's hard to bite through and chew, which happens when it's floppy and soft to pinch.

Lamb chops, med-rare pink. Depends on what cut. Chops med-rare pink...leg of lamb depending on cooking method but we do it rotis on a wood fired grill so it is med-rare on the medium side. (beef steaks med-rare on the rare side).

I need a good sear with any meats so i get flavor and rare-med-rare centers...

Duck is still an experiment at home...pink, not rare but crispy skin is full of flavor so we look for crisp but rare-medium internal meat. (pink)

Lamb chops and steaks we have down without incident and have perfected the process...did take a few years like our burgers we grind fresh....

Duck and goose is maybe once a year so we tread cautiously with fear and do ok but not with confidence. Pink is preferred.

I think of pink as med-rare.

I like my lamb as I like my beef, pretty red and rare. As with beef, though, getting a brown crusty outside is the first priority.

In France I developed a taste for raw ground beef (boeuf hachee), but you can't get it in any restaurant here (at least, none that I'm willing to pay for) so I've made my own. Carpaccio is another form of raw beef. Yummy.

When it's good beef it's yummy....when it's not so good beef...it's not so yummy...in fact it's horrible if the beef isn't very good!

Lamb has got to be on the rare side of medium rare. Not sure if there is a difference between women or men. My son is a chef. He agrees on the rare side of medium. He is not a woman.

LOL! Suzi, I didn't mean only women! It's just that I know a lot of men who like their meat med-rare to rare and most of the women I know like it medium to med-well. Because of that--which only says anything about the people I know, not a generalization to the rest of the world--I was a bit surprised at how many women in this group prefer rare on the raw side, which the women in my IRL milieu do not. Nothing at all about your son was meant there, and he is right there with the rest of the chefy world for liking med-rare.

Plllog, most of the women that I know want their steaks cooked medium to well done. I, too, was surprised that so many of the women on that thread preferred it on the rare side of medium. I like mine medium rare. DSII likes it well done.

Duck--medium rare. If either (duck & steak) are cooked past medium rare, I won't eat it.

We don't eat lamb. In fact, I've tasted it only a couple of times. Do not like it and I'm a very un-picky eater. To me, the stuff smells awful while it's cooking and doesn't taste much better. I'm supposing that it's something that you need to grow up eating as it seems like a really tough taste to acquire.

I disagree with many people.

Meat, well-done, medium, rare, ---- all taste good. It is what you prefer, or expect.

Beef, for instance, depending on recipe, can be from raw to way over done.

With normal way of cooking, short ribs have to be well done. But with Sous vide, they can be medium rare.

In Japan, you can even have chicken sushi.

dcarch

Lamb, med. rare to medium at most. DH eats duck and likes medium.

Pork, med rare skewing towards medium, but there'd better still be pink in the middle. This is still tough to order and actually get on a plate in a restaurant. Ugh.

I grew up eating fully cooked leg of lamb at Easter and other special occasions. In fact, everyone in our extended Greek family and all our Greek friends cooked roast lamb until is was definitely well done. I never ate a rare-ish meal of roast lamb until we went to a restaurant in Reno while visiting my son. I was amazed at the difference. I certainly enjoyed the meal but would never try to duplicate it at home. My husband doesn't care for lamb at all, so there'd be no point.

I'm lucky that DH loves lamb, too. This way, I can make it at home and enjoy it with him. I guess it was a few weeks ago that DH grilled lamb rib chops. So good!

Lamb - medium rare to medium

I've never had duck.

"---We don't eat lamb. In fact, I've tasted it only a couple of times. Do not like it ---"

In USA BBQ competitions, it's always beef, pork and chicken. I don't think lamb is common.

"---I've never had duck.--"

Start with Peking roasted duck, which is always well done. Tender, and juicy.

Beef

When I was in Buenos Aires, I ordered my beef well done, the way Argentinians prefer. They certainly know about beef and eating beef.

dcarch

dcarch, beef depends on what dish I'm making. If it's stew or pot roast, then of course it's well done. Steaks and burgers I want rare, (although I'll eat bits of the raw burger as I'm cooking without batting an eye. I would never turn down tartare or carpaccio either, just as I wouldn't turn my nose up at sloppy joes or tacos, which are well done burger based dishes.

I've tried lamb from rare to well done, just don't like it at all. (shrug) Taste is subjective, not objective, so others who love it can all have my share!

I grew up eating duck roasted for hours, Grandma thought everything needed to be roasted for hours. I'm just now getting used to poultry that isn't well done.

Annie

I don't think lamb is common.

No, it isn't common. When I lived in Oklahoma, there was none in the meat case and frozen leg of lamb in the store at Easter. Twenty some years later, living in central Wisconsin, larger community, somewhat more culturally diverse (Polish, German Scandinavian, Hmong) and pretty much the same story...very little to none except around Easter. I think a couple of stores have a bit of frozen lamb but no space in the fresh meat case.

ci_lantro, it's only been the past couple of years, but lamb is fresh in the meat case at my local Meijer store. I have a WalMart, an Aldi and a Save a Lot, but nothing large or independent, and Meijer is the only one that carries lamb. Fortunately for Elery, the farmer's market has one farmer that raises lamb, so I get it there.

Annie

That seems so odd to me. In the West, I guess lamb is more common. We always had it at home, and it's always been on restaurant menus, but there are also lots of sheep here. Goat is harder to get, but it's also more assertive and takes more knowledge to cook correctly.

plllog, here lamb chops are on the menus of very "fancy" restaurants, and it's always the most expensive item on the menu. We do have one Mediterranean restaurant in town which has lamb gyros, but whenever I try to buy one for Elery they are either sold out or they are closed!

Annie

Oh, now I'm wanting lamb gyros (or shvarma)! Or koobideh. Souvlaki. Shashlik. So many more! I'm all for grilled or roasted or stewed lamb, but I think I need to pull out the ME spices!

I grew up in New Jersey....and lamb was as common as pork. Lamb chops were on every restaurant menu...well those that had something other than burgers and sandwiches. We probably had lamb about every 2 weeks. My mother thought she should serve liver once a week, but I tried to talk her out of that. I like liver a lot more now that I am an adult.
A lamb rib chop was kids food. If the adults were having a fancy meal, you stuck a couple of lamb chops and a baked potato in the broiler for the kids>
When my kids were babies, strained lamb and rice dinner was a staple....think both Gerber and heinz made it.
When I first visited Iowa I saw all the sheep in the fields, but when I moved here was shocked to learn that midwesterners don't eat lamb. I managed to arrange to have a lamb butchered for the freezer, but it was too old and very like mutton. We ate it but mostly in stews and roasts with lots of veggies.
In the past 30 years or so we are finally able to buy lamb, but rarely in this little town. I did order a leg for Easter one year and it was huge!! and cost almost $90....and tasted like mutton. I go to Des Moines to get lamb

Pink for both. Lamb is a lot more common here, more so than pork. When we first came to Australia in 1969, pork and chicken was what you had for Christmas dinner or _very_ special occasions, otherwise you ate mostly lamb and some beef or fish. My mother hated lamb and felt she could taste the flavour of lamb which had been kept in the same refrigerated display case as the beef she was buying. I didn't eat lamb until I was about 14 and went to stay at a friend's farm, where they butchered their own sheep. I really like lamb :-)

You made another comment that excluded men and I chose not to respond at that time, but I do feel that addressing this audience as "women" is off-putting. Think of replacing the word "women" with "men" and see how that sounds to you.

I had a professor when I was in design school who taught the textiles classes, and she would always refer to the members of the class as if they were all women (95% were) and say things like "Write this down and put it in your purse" (fortunately I did have a purse) or "Have your boyfriends pick you up an hour later after class on Friday..." (which was particularly offensive to the lesbians in the class), and she made it clear that she did not like having men in the class, especially when I was the only student (of more than 100 in the class) who turned in a perfect textiles identification project box and the end of the semester.

I mention this only because I tend to avoid participating in threads that are gender specific. The Home Decorating forum is worse - so much so that I seldom go there any more.

Parents (Mom or Dad) always cooked leg of lamb rare - medium rare, and that's the way I still make it after all these years. Make slits and insert garlic clove slices, and add rosemary at some point. For shoulder lamb chops, I do those medium (I don't buy those tiny overpriced chops that are all bone, no meat).

Duck breast - if I trust the source, medium rare. Otherwise, no pink. Legs are always no pink.

Goat I've gotten from farms - most cuts I do medium, but last fall I roasted a boneless leg of goat to medium rare. Absolutely awesome. Unfortunately goat is hard to find. It is my favorite meat!

Lars, I also tend not to post in gender specific threads - well,unless the topic is, say, menopause... but lamb, duck... I'm all over these foods when I can be.

Lars, I took the opening statement to mean that Pillog expected the women to like well done lamb, and expected the men to like it rare....and was surprised to find that women liked their meat cooked the same way men did.
Hmmmm...? I also stay away from single sex forums...I prefer a broader viewpoint....and find women are often petty and get wound up in trivialities....as for example the squeezed lemon thread.

" Lamb and duck which used to be always served medium-well are now medium-rare in restaurants."

I've never been served lamb or duck breasts medium well in restaurants or at home. Both have always been served rare to medium rare.

We love our beef on the rare side too. If I know that a dinner guest prefers their beef , lamb or duck cooked passed medium rare, then I choose something else to serve as a main course. Or I'll do a different cut, like lamb shanks that are wonderful braised and slow cooked.

But that's a little difficult when you invite friends over for steaks....stated as an invitation..."come on over for steaks" and as the twice baked are baking and the asparagus is ready to steam and the salad ready to be dressed....you head for the grill and ask.... "how do you like your steak?"... The reply is medium well and you ask just a bit of pink then? and you get "nope...no pink at all!"....and you mourn for your beautiful beef tenderloin!

Linda, you you are in trouble at that point. Which is why I would never issue an invitation like that unless I already knew that they liked their steaks rare to medium rare. It really is a shame to ruin a good piece of beef by overcooking.

Lars, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean that at all! I wasn't addressing only the women or lumping the men in with the women. I only meant that the proportion of women plumping for the raw size of rare was unusual to me. The men's responses seemed to be a normal or unremarkable spread. In the linked discussion, I could have said "people", but I said women just because I know about women's cooking behavior, both now and from my grandmother's age, as well as what I've read in old diaries and cooking articles. I don't know enough about men to say, though I have heard lectures about the kinds of implements that women used in the past, while I can't recall anything on the subject about chuckwagon cookies or other male cooks. My only memories of a being in a kitchen with a man making a reduction are by an astronautical engineer who is more precision oriented. I wasn't excluding men, per se, just didn't have any relevant information on how they do things so didn't speak for them. If something should like that should happen again, please chime in!

There are some posters whose genders/gender identities aren't known to me, but I promise you I don't mean to marginalize men, and I certainly didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable. This is not a women's group, nor do I regard it as one. I have belonged to a women's group whose mission was to give women roles and authority, as well as a feminine voice, in what was otherwise a very traditional, traditionally male field, but even then men were welcome to participate so long as they didn't try to take over. This is not such a group and the only one I can remember belonging to which was 100% women only was the girl scouts. Neither textiles nor cooking are womens' fields (nursing babies is, though there are some men with acquired (rather than experiential) knowledge on the subject), nor does gender of any kind have much to do with them. While there are some sociological and biological differences in tastes, they're not prominent. That is something that desired meat temperature speaks to, however, which is why I made the remarks at all--it was a beside the way difference that I found interesting and educational.

If lamb is so expensive how can my cats have cans of it in every permutation mix imaginable at the same price as other cat food?

Because they are getting the animals that were raised for wool and are too old to be market lambs....and also they have the parts that are not salable mixed in.