When buying lamb, choose the leanest cuts with firm, creamy-white fat (although fat colour alone should not be used as a reliable indicator of quality). Avoid cuts with excessive fat or with fat that looks crumbly, brittle and yellowish: this means the meat is old. The colour and flavour of the flesh will vary depending on where the sheep were raised. Look for pale-pink flesh in a very young lamb, to a light- or dark-red colour in an older animal. A good butcher is likely to stock a greater variety of cuts than your local supermarket, or you'll be able to order exactly what you want.
Rare breed lamb is farmed non-intensively. The meat is dark, closely textured and lean, and tastes like a cross between lamb and venison. You can buy named, pure-bred, rare breeds from speciality butchers, over the internet using specialist meat mail-order companies, or from farmers' markets. Rare-breed meat costs a little more than commercial lamb, but the difference in flavour will be noticeable. Rare breeds include: Boreray, Castlemilk Moorit, Hebridean, Manx Loghtan, North Ronaldsay, Soay, Balwen Welsh Mountain, Cotswold, Devon and Cornwall Longwool, Dorset Down, Dorset Horn, Greyface Dartmoor, Hill Radnor, Leicester Longwool, Lincoln Longwool, Llanwenog, Norfolk Horn, Oxford Down, Portland, Ryeland, Shropshire, Southdown, Teeswater, Wensleydale, Whitefaced Woodland, Whiteface Dartmoor.
