The White Hat Recipe for Jumbuck Soup/Stew

Many of the prized dishes of French classic cuisine take several days and a tremendous amount of skill, effort and preparation. So does jumbuck soup. Well it doesn’t take any major skill, effort or preparation but it does take a couple of days which means you can feel like a real chef.

Day 1

Take 3 or 4 lamb necks and cover them with cold water in a slow cooker / large pot on the stove / iron pot on the campfire or whatever combination of heating device and vessel you have to hand. Simmer gently for many hours. Leave to cool overnight. If you are intending to use any beans or pulses, soak them overnight.

Several pointers for day 1:

1. There are several cuts of meat which go under the name ‘lamb neck’. One is the ‘lamb neck and scrag end’ which has an amorphous blob of additional meat hanging off it. This cut is awaiting imaginative renaming by marketers to improve its sale prospects. That is not what we are talking about because for this recipe what we need is just the frame and meat of the neck. It is the bit between the head and shoulders and is about the size of a human neck (except in the case of rugby players where evolution has dispensed with that part of the anatomy) and currently (August 2008) they sell for about $1.50 each at the Victoria Market.
2. On day 1 there is no need for any other ingredients. However, if there are other people in the house there is no point cooking unless people KNOW you are cooking. In that case add some onion or star anise - it doesn’t matter what as long as it elicits the response “Gee, that smells good!”

Day 2

Discard the fat that has set on the surface. Remove the necks, crumble the meat off the bones, tear into sizes that will fit on a soup spoon and return to pot. I usually return the larger stripped bones as well. They are easy enough to remove later and this extracts any last goodness left on them. Add washed and drained beans that you soaked overnight. It doesn’t matter what beans you use but one ingredient a good jumbuck soup should have is pearl barley. To the untrained palate it may seem relatively tasteless, but for the more experienced it adds the unmistakable and much-valued overtones of the CWA. Chop assorted sorry vegetables from the crisper and return to the simmer. Add salt and pepper. Dishes like these often cry out for a lot of salt but be sparing at this stage. Some people may add canned diced tomatoes at this stage but that is far too Mediterranean and pretentious and that turns jumbuck soup into lamb soup. Next thing they’ll be wanting to dice the lamb into even cubes rather than tearing it up.

Decision Time

After a number of hours of simmering comes decision time. Is it going to be soup or stew? If the answer is soup, add some more water. If the answer is stew, turn up the heat to help reduce the liquids. Add a dice of your fresher vegetables. Taste and adjust the seasoning. It needs salt. It always needs salt, but don’t be too hasty. A hearty dose of Worcestershire Sauce adds colour, flavour – and saltiness. Leave it a little underdone so that people can adjust to their own preference at the table. Taste again. Not bad, but it lacks depth. This is where you need the ingredients you won’t find in the CWA cookbook. I use either some sambal oelek or a dubious product called ‘Explosive Mixture’ available fro the Mediterranean Supermarket. Both are chilli based, but when used in moderation they can add depth rather than heat. Continue to simmer until the latest added vegetables are tender.

This dish is best served with hot damper under the stars. If served at home it can be accompanied by hot buttered toast and presented with the traditional 1950s Australian garnish of two (or maybe even three) leaves of parsley on each bowl.

Related pages

• The White Hat Guide to Lamb & Goat
• The White Hat Guide to Butchers in Melbourne