How Lamb Necks & Veal Cheeks Lost Their 'Cheap Cut' Status

A Post reader recently asked via e-mail,

“Why is it so difficult, if not impossible, to find old-fashioned ‘peasant’ foods? Lamb necks, thick veal breasts with a pocket to stuff and pickled tongue were poor-man delicious foods that I cooked years ago, but those cuts don’t seem to exist anymore. If you do happen to find them they’re now luxury foods. Why? I’m sure the animals still have the same parts. Are they shipped overseas? I have to buy my good beef soup bones with cartilage or marrow at the halal butchers.”

The short answer is: The bones and cuts of meat she’s missing are out there — you just have to know where to look.

Adam Danforth, author of “Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat, and Pork: The Comprehensive Photographic Guide to Humane Slaughtering and Butchering” (Storey), which won both James Beard Foundation and International Association of Culinary Professionals awards this year, offers a broader perspective: “Quite frankly, we don’t have a culinary culture that values the entire animal, and, true to form, our cuisine doesn’t appropriately revere the animal.

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