On this episode of The Farmer & The Foodie, we're in West Kentucky for our first taste of the regional favorite mutton.

█ █ █ █ And in the kitchen, we're making a classic Kentucky dish.

I'm Maggie Keith and I'm the farmer.

And I'm Lindsey McClave and I'm the foodie.

And this is.

The Farmer.

& The Foodie.

Funding for this program is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

Mutton comes from the meat of a mature sheep.

While it was very popular over a century ago, today it is hard to find on a menu.

Except in West Kentucky, our journey for mutton begins with Michael and Stacie at Palmer Farms.

We have been grass-fed beef producers since 2011.

I had the opportunity to take over a USDA processing plant two years ago, and that was 30 years established in the mutton business.

So now, we're in the mutton business.

The previous owner had a brickyard, and he wasn't fit for it to raise cattle, so he decided to raise sheep.

And when he went to buy a herd, he bought a bunch of rams, and he didn't know what to do with it.

So he just loaded his kids in the car seat and went to Owensboro and started hitting up restaurants and built a huge mutton business over 30 years.

What?

Wow.

Yes.

My husband's been on this farm for seven generations.

They used to do dairy cattle and then grass-fed beef.

[They aren't] fired tobacco farmers.

And now we have sheep on our farm.

Where do the sheep come from?

Do you raise the ewes or do you get them from Owensboro?

We do not.

We process 4,000 to 5,000 per year.

So we just can't get that many cool ewes in the State of Kentucky.

So a lot of them come in from out west.

Mutton was not a term I was always familiar with.

So can you tell us what mutton is?

Mutton is just a sheep that's over a year old.

It's a lamb if it's under a year.

And what have you found like with the personalities of these sheep living here with them?

Like do you like raising sheep?

Oh, they're fun.

[laughs] [laughs] Oh, yeah.

They all look different.

We get every breed in.

So every one of them looks different, and they're definitely different than a beef.

How did you make it so that you have hair sheep and wool sheep here?

And do you notice a difference between the two?

The hair sheep do yield a little better, just because they don't have all the wool.

But they're also smaller.

The wool sheep are usually larger.

What weight are you processing them?

We tried to have a hanging weight between 100 and 125 pounds.

Wow.

So they're over 200 pounds.

So in cattle terms, they're like coal cows.

Yes.

Are they coal sheep or coal ewes?

Yes, coal ewes.

So they're all ewes.

And that just means that they haven't had a baby or they didn't get pregnant.

We do get rams occasionally, but way more ewes.

And so when they arrive here, do they go out on the grasses and wander?

Tell us a little bit about how that works when they arrive at the farm.

Sometimes we bring grass to them, green chop.

But mostly, they just eat hay because they're not here long.

So you mentioned the barbecue.

So some of the restaurants are buying them whole.

What other customers are buying these animals and how are they buying them?

Are they buying cuts or are they buying wholes and halves?

We do lots of quarters.

And we'll cut them down into six pieces.

We do a lot of church picnics.

So they'll do mostly quartered.

It's our big one.

They get 9,000 pounds in one day.

Oh, my gosh.

How many ewes is that?

Eighty.

Wow.

Eighty ewes?

Oh, wow.

So can you tell us a little bit about why this region the state has really embraced mutton so much?

Why is it kind of such like deep tradition here?

I don't honestly know the answer to that question, but we've always been worried, you know, because a lot of the people that cook for the picnics and everything are older and we're wondering, do the young people like mutton?

So when we've made some deliveries, we've just asked the kids, "Do you like mutton?"

And they're like, "Who doesn't?"

[laughs] Oh, good.

Perfect.

So I guess the tradition is going to continue.

Yeah.

So we're passing down the farming tradition, seven generations here, and the food traditions.

[laughs] The people are so fun.

The restaurant people are fun.

The sheep buyers are fun.

I enjoy it.

And you all raised your children here.

We did.

Are they part of the business?

And two of the three work for us full-time.

So if you call to make a mutton order, you'll talk to our daughter who is the office manager.

And then, our son is the mutton delivery man.

So he would be the one to bring it to you.

Tell us a little bit about this community and what it means to live here on a farm that's been around for seven generations.

Well, we, for years, did farmer's markets.

So we have great customers, and we don't do the farmer's market anymore.

But those customers are loyal enough that they drive to the processing plant and purchase meat there.

So I get to give them a hug and see them often.

I always thought I made it once.

I didn't have to go to farmer's markets anymore.

People don't know how much work that is.

Yeah.

Giving up a whole Saturday, Sunday when there's farm work to be done.

Michael was brilliant in the different creative ways that he was making his farm work.

The farmer fixes he had around the pen made me chuckle because we have tons of farmer fixes like that around our farm.

And I felt at home on that farm.

What is it like adding mutton into this diverse business operation you've got going here?

I used to always refer to sheep as range maggots.

[laughter] You know, I had to eat my words.

I kind of like them.

[laughs] I've got used to them.

They're different than cows.

They move different than cows.

They handle different than cows.

And cattle farmers talk about stupid sheep.

Well, you just got to wise up how sheep think.

And sometimes they don't think.

[laughs] They're a little more skittish.

I find them harder to get close to.

You find them to be skittish?

Yeah, compared to my cattle, at least.

But they just don't work like cows.

Yeah.

No, they don't.

So you cut your own hay here?

Forage is really my thing.

I really like to do that.

And did you learn that from your grandparents?

My granddaddy was a forage guy.

He put up quality hay, insisted on quality hay.

A lot of times we say we're not beef farmers.

We're grass farmers.

That's exactly right.

The more tons of forage you grow, the more pounds of beef you can sell.

Forage is really what you're producing.

The cow's the harvester.

And so growing up in this corner of Kentucky, did you eat a lot of mutton?

Was that like a normal part of the diet?

I never ate any mutton until we bought this plant.

I started hauling mutton.

Really?

And I like it.

What's your favorite way to enjoy it?

On a plate.

[laughter] Like barbecue?

Yeah, barbecue.

I've never had anything but barbecue mutton.

A lot of people like lamb and don't like mutton.

Really?

And you know that you really need to have your lamb ready for market for slaughter in around six months or it will start tasting like mutton.

When I think of sheep, the first thing I think of is wool.

So where does the wool from the sheep go when they're done being processed?

Compost pile.

And does that impact your compost?

That's so interesting.

Wool's high in calcium.

It's hard to say whether the calcium content in the compost pile is driven more by wool or by bones.

You're like a soil scientist and a forager.

[laughs] Are most of the people around these area farmers?

A lot less than it was 20 years ago.

How has this community changed in the last 20 years?

The farms have gotten bigger and less farmers.

Same as it is everywhere.

I don't think many people know that, though.

When I started farming back in the '90s, they said the average farm around was about 500 acres.

And now, a 4,000 acre farm is not a big farm.

What are people farming on 4,000 acres?

Corn, soybean, wheat.

For the commodity market?

And you're farming food for people to eat.

I'd say that's a win.

So I felt like Old Hickory is like the most perfect partner for the Palmer Farm because both have been around for over a century.

Both are multi-generation family-owned businesses, and both are just so passionate and knowledgeable about this really specific ingredient and technique.

So I was first impressed by how fresh Old Hickory was getting their mutton.

I mean, it was processed a couple days before.

It was delivered straight to their cooler, and they were cutting it up to put it right into the smoker.

The dedication Old Hickory has to Palmer Farm, to the freshness of the mutton, made me really respect their business model and their dedication to barbecue.

When we sat down with Keith, you could tell he was honored to be part of this family business.

The business was deep-rooted in the history of the family, and Keith took that to heart.

We sell so much mutton here.

You have to learn how to do it correctly.

And you can't learn how to do that overnight.

You can't learn how to do it in a year.

It takes a long time to learn how to do it.

So we cook ours for 20 hours, low and slow.

We cook it on a pit with straight Hickory wood, no gas, no charcoal, nothing like that.

It's just all Hickory wood.

Our barbecue sauce is what makes our mutton so good.

They marry together so well.

We don't put a pre-rub on there.

We don't inject it.

We mop it all on there.

The smoke that sits on there, and the dip that we put on there is perfect for mutton.

Can you tell me a little bit about what goes into that?

Sure.

That's our cooking dip.

So that goes on everything that we have raw here.

It's got Worcestershire in it, it's got vinegar in it, and it's got all of our spices in it too.

Where did mutton come in?

So mutton is a regional thing.

It actually started with the churches doing it.

Churches were always doing it for fundraisers and cook-offs and all that kind of stuff.

And one thing led to another where somebody said, "Hey, let's sell this."

Our original person was Charles "Pappy" Foreman.

That would have been the first generation.

We're at the sixth generation now.

He originally started Old Hickory.

We started in 1918.

Why do you prioritize fresh mutton?

Well, if you go to your local grocery store, do you want to buy something fresh or do you want to buy something frozen?

Do you want a frozen steak or do you want a fresh steak that the butcher just cut up for you?

It's the same thing here.

So any of our mutton, it's fresh.

It's never frozen.

It just got processed.

So what you eat that day came off that pit that morning.

From the farm to the processor is a very short drive, about 15 minutes.

And that makes a big difference in the animal's stress and how that flavor is gonna come through.

Right, there's really not much stress on them whatsoever.

And that does help out a lot too.

And they know how to do it.

I mean, it's a science behind that too.

Stacie and Mike were able to learn how to do that exactly the way that it's been done for years because it works for us, it works for them.

And you are from the area.

Did you grow up coming to Old Hickory?

I did.

I just grew up about 20 minutes away from here.

So we always grew up - everybody around here eats barbecue.

So I didn't actually start working here until I was 16.

I'm 40 now, so you can do the math.

So I did grow up around barbecue.

Everybody around here loves cooking home too.

And now, I've just made it into a passion.

Well, and I think you've spoken so much about consistency and everything needs to be the same.

People wanna come back and have that same experience.

But you have so many variables.

I mean, that grill alone, it's incredible, but there's the hot end, the cool end.

Tell us about just the managing of those variables to make sure things run as they're supposed to.

Sure.

So when I actually learned to cook, you know, 20-something years ago, it was this.

It was a hand on the pit.

Let's see how hot it is.

[laughs] And that's how I learned to cook, just by the feel of it.

But over time, it's like, "We can do this a little better.

We can be a little more efficient."

I bought some thermometers, drilled some holes in them pits, and I put them in there.

So that way there, you can just go over there and you can look, there's no gas involved.

There's nothing to regulate it other than the wood that gets put on there.

So if you can go in there and you can look at that temperature gauge, and you can say, "Hey, look, it's at 200 degrees, and I need it at 240.

I got to get some wood on there."

Because you can't have it fluctuates up and down.

It can't be 150, then it can't be 300 degrees.

It's got to maintain a steady temperature in order to cook right.

And I noticed there are the loin, the ribs, and then the shoulder.

And then, the hindquarters.

And so we're interested in the shanks.

[laughs] And so that's in the hindquarters.

Have you all ever like specifically noticed a difference in the flavor of the shank?

I mean, a lot of people use the shank if they're cooking burgoo or something like that.

They'll cook it in with it.

You know, we cut it off all the way at the very end.

So burgoo is kind of like a vegetable soup with meat in it.

So it does have all the veggies in it, but we put mutton, pork, and chicken in ours.

We make it in 20 or 40 gallons at a time, and we make it every single day.

Wow.

I, for one, am really excited to try mutton for the first time.

So can we place some orders?

Absolutely.

I'm not qualified enough to be a server, but I'll get one for sure.

[laughter] Sounds great.

█ █ █ █ Oh, my goodness.

I am so excited.

It's definitely like barbecue sandwich.

I mean, it's what I think, but it has like a really rich flavor.

I love the vinegar bite, like it's really balanced.

It's so good.

Yeah.

This sliced mutton has a really deep flavor.

I've never had mutton before.

I've only had lamb.

But the mutton flavor.

Let me try it.

it's not like gamey at all.

It's light.

The density of the beef is there, but with the mutton like it falls apart more in your mouth.

But it has richness to it too.

It's delicious.

Yeah.

I want to try the chopped and get in there.

I honestly really, really like the chopped.

I think because like when I cook barbecue, I really crave a barbecue sandwich.

So this is like... Oh, that is good.

Do it for me like that.

I think I was anticipating, just since it's older, for it to have a little bit more intensity to it.

But it's very approachable.

It's very palatable.

But there is a distinctive depth of flavor there.

And it's very satisfying.

And I really appreciate that.

Now, this is the burgoo, right?

Yeah.

That is your burgoo right there.

I love this burgoo.

Oh, my gosh.

That's fantastic.

I got to try that.

I can see why people eat it year-round.

Because it's very like fresh.

Unlike, you know, like a chili.

It's got like richness, but it's also like...

It's very hearty.

Yeah.

Hearty is a good word for burgoo.

Yeah.

It's hearty, but like the corn and I think the vegetable bits in there help keep it like not too way down.

Yeah.

It's not like stick to your ribs, hearty.

Yeah.

It's very satisfying.

Everything combined makes burgoo good, from the vegetables to the meat.

I think why I'm appreciating so much is still you can pick out the individual parts, but they're definitely like - they come together.

This is really weird.

You're not eating.

[laughs] [laughs] You're making me hungry.

You're like, "I'm good."

So what I think is really fun about burgoo is first off, it is entirely Kentucky.

It's a Kentucky dish, special, lots of different tales of its heritage, but ultimately it's really a scratch stew, for lack of a better description.

There's just a few sort of non-negotiables, probably most importantly of which is you have to have at least three meats.

So at Old Hickory, they use chicken and mutton, of course, in their burgoo, in addition to a couple other meats.

And we wanted to take advantage of the beautiful mutton shanks that Stacie sent us home with.

That was really generous.

And a nod to the chicken that Old Hickory also uses.

We've got some chicken thighs here, bone and skin on.

Bone is hugely important in this recipe because it's going to give us so much flavor for our stew.

And then, we have some oxtail, which is kind of a unique ingredient.

And I thought sort of a nod to, first off, your farm.

So tell us what oxtail is, first off.

So oxtail literally is like the tail of the cattle.

And oxtail came with its name because you used to just take it from the ox, which an ox is, just an older animal, usually a bull or a steer.

Now, it's not just from the ox that we're using the tail from.

We're using it from the heifers we process, the steers we process.

All the different beef animals that we process, we can get the oxtail from.

And they're super rich in flavor.

That's one of the things I love about them.

But also, the marrow, the connective tissue in the bone in the middle, it's actually pretty like soft and gives back a little bit.

I was really studying this and looking at how you can see so much life and vigor in that animal through its tail and through looking at the bone.

And then, also, knowing that this is a cut that has been used for generations at family gatherings and coming together around a long, slow process.

When it comes down to it, it's a waste-not-want-not stew.

You mix everything together and with these cuts of meat, especially since we've got these beautiful bones and the skin on the chicken, it is all going to cook down low and slow and give us a really rich and beautiful stew.

So we're gonna season these really nicely.

One way we're gonna up the flavor too, I just had some whole spices here that I toasted just really lightly in a dry pan on the stove and I'm gonna grind them up.

We've got whole fennel, coriander, cumin, some black pepper.

█ █ █ █ Perfect.

So if you just wanna do a light seasoning over this.

So we're just gonna season both sides.

Then, we're gonna sear off our meat.

We'll probably have to do it in a couple batches because we want every little piece to have plenty of room in the pan to just get a nice sear, add some flavor to the bottom of the pot.

And then, once it's seared, we'll take the meat off, and we're gonna add just some basic aromatics for our stew.

We've got carrots, onions, garlic.

I have some kale stems that I dug out of my veggie drawer.

Definitely just sort of your basic root veg, go in there, get them nice and sautéed.

And then, at the end, we're gonna add some fresh vegetables in there for some crunch.

But first we've got to get our base ready.

We've seared our meat and sautéed our aromatics.

And now, we need to add one tablespoon tomato paste, one cup red wine, our spice mix.

█ █ █ █ One hundred twenty-eight ounce can of diced tomatoes, and four cups beef broth.

We'll let that come up to a boil and then we'll add our meat back into the pot.

█ █ █ █ You wanna cook this low and slow.

We don't have a smoker here, but we do have a great cast iron.

So we're gonna stick it in a 300 degree oven for three to four hours and just let it really stew down.

And by the end, it's gonna fall off the bone.

We'll shred it up to add it back into the stew.

I like to put it in the oven versus on top of the stove, set it and forget it and then have the most beautiful surprise when I pull the top of the pot off.

Okay.

So burgoo has been cooking away and the meat should be super duper tender.

That mutton has really melted down along with the oxtail, and I just can't wait to taste the broth.

So let us see how we do.

Yum, yum.

All right.

So we're gonna work on shredding this meat together.

Let's start with one of our mutton shack.

And I love, I mean, you can see how it's just like falling off the bone and what a great bone.

And you can see down where the marrow has released and it's all gone into the super rich broth.

So I'll give you one to work on, and I'll take out - oh my gosh, it's hard to pick up, like it doesn't want to stay together.

All off the bone.

Yes, that's what we like to see.

That is what we like to see.

All right.

Low and slow.

Oh, my, look at that.

It just fell right apart.

Fantastic.

All right.

So let's just dig in.

Well, that bone just popped right off.

That pink.

I am gonna just try it really quick, though.

How is it?

It's really good.

It is super, super good.

It like has all of the richness that I love from lamb, but just like the dial turned up.

Oh, I gotta try.

Just a little bit more, you know, so it's not that for me an unfamiliar flavor.

It's just a little bit more intense and mature.

And what's great about this type of technique is any cut of meat that is part of the animal that works, like it's very tough.

It's gonna do really well in this method of cooking, and it gives you just like an infinite possibilities for flavors.

You can add all sorts of different vegetables that are fresh throughout the year.

And, you know, speaking of that, often with burgoo, you find, I think, okra, maybe green beans in there, corn.

And we're not quite in that season yet, but we have these fantastic sugar snap peas that I found at the market and some of this zucchini and squash that I thought we just chop up and add back into the pot along with our shredded meat.

And it won't take but a couple minutes to warm up, maybe 15 minutes just to kind of simmer back down together.

And while that works, it's magic.

I thought you could make the whole cake for us.

Oh, I would love to.

I can't wait to try them.

What I always tell my customers is basically the more that body part had to move and work like a hip or an arm, like that's going to have more flavor.

The more movement is more flavors.

So you might think of that as tough, but actually that's how you get all of that delicious, whether it's mutton, beefy, chickeny flavor is going to be from the parts that work more.

Like the thighs of the chicken works way more than the breast that's just sitting there, or with the cattle, the tenderloin is known as this like prized cut, but it's in the center with no movement, so no flavor.

So that's why I'm always going for like the oxtail or the rump roast or something with more movement.

And that's the beauty of this burgoo.

It's got all of them.

And you could add even more.

█ █ █ █ I could do this for days, like being over this pile of meat is making me so happy.

It's making me really hungry.

[laughs] So I think we should get it back into our delicious stew base.

And like I said, add some fresh veggies.

And yeah, I can hardly wait to have this with a warm potato on the side.

Woo.

█ █ █ █ Look at that.

█ █ █ █ Veggies into the pot of burgoo.

█ █ █ █ We'll just let our veggies simmer in the pot for about 15 minutes, the perfect amount of time to fry up our hoe cakes.

█ █ █ █ Lindsey, I've been reading this book, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson, and it has gotten me really into hoe cake.

[laughs] So I'm really excited I get to do a recipe with this episode to go with your amazing burgoo.

The recipe calls for self-rising corn flour.

So she also conveniently teaches you how to do that.

So it's basically mostly cornmeal.

And this is from flint corn, which is corn grown out for grain in a field and very traditional to the Appalachian area where she's from and just Kentucky, in general.

And so mix that cornmeal with a little bit of flour.

So we use some whole wheat flour and then a little bit of salt and baking powder.

And I love a homemade pre-mix.

I mean, I think that's like so fun and such a wonderful way to make it easy to just reach for something to do a little bit of that work ahead of time.

So then we're going to do a cup and a half of milk.

█ █ █ █ Beautiful.

And this is whole milk.

We're just going to pour this in.

█ █ █ █ Then, we need two eggs.

So then, we're just going to mix this together.

There is salt in the self-rising batter, but keep in mind, we are going to get a little bit of like a smoky, salty flavor, not too smoky, salty, but from the lard.

It's a smooth.

It's not smoked or anything like that, but that does give like a little depth of flavor because we're going to use pork lard to fry this in.

And also, what you do is you get your oil hot in the pan and then you take out two tablespoons and put it in the batter.

So that's going to add some richness to the batter.

Oh, cool.

I've never done that before.

Oh, that's really neat.

All right.

Let's get frying.

█ █ █ █ Perfect.

█ █ █ █ I can hardly wait to taste one of these hoe cakes.

They look so good.

They smell phenomenal.

You were saying that Crystal wants us to have a little salted butter on the hoe cake, is that right?

Yes.

And so my first go-to is always just like take a nice little pat of butter, add it on there.

Oh, yeah.

Get in there.

[laughs] And then, we're just gonna add a little Maldon sea salt.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, what did we do to be so lucky?

This is eating.

And do you know why they call them a hoe cake?

I do not.

Okay.

This is really interesting.

So out in the field, when people were working, they would bring their lunch, usually.

And one really easy thing to do, well, not super easy, but over a fire out in the field, they would have their hoe with them.

And so this is a flat hoe.

So they would take their flat hoe, put it on top of the fire, the coals, and then they would add a little cornmeal and water in a bowl and pour it directly onto the hoe and eat their hoe cake out in the field.

Oh, my gosh.

No way.

Oh, what ingenuity.

I know.

[laughs] I love it.

And I feel like these dishes have similar spirits just from really wonderful heritage of Kentucky.

And yeah, cheers to that.

Cheers.

It's so good.

I love cornmeal, especially in this manner when you get that just a little bit of grit, but it's like so satisfying.

And the texture makes it.

And just dip in that butter.

It's got everything you want from a pancake, but it's savory, which is fantastic.

Like there's no doubt.

It's going to soak up this butter so well.

All right, I'm going to give this a little try too.

█ █ █ █ It's really good.

[laughs] It just makes me happy.

It's just the type of thing you want to just curl up and it just soothes your soul.

Oh, it's so good.

█ █ █ █ The farmer and foodie take on a bird meal is fresh.

[laughs] It's pretty good.

Yeah.

It's so fresh.

I think that's one of my favorite parts about it is the final touches at the end.

I think it really makes such a fantastic, fantastic difference.

And yeah, the little bright puff herbs.

And this meat raised with wonderful animal husbandry and these cuts that are full of flavor, what better way to honor them?

Yeah.

Cheers.

Cheers.

█ █ █ █ Funding for this program is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

█ █ █ █