Recipes

Fifteen minutes at breakfast, dinner sorted by six

The slow cooker was invented for cuts like this. Forequarter chops have the fat and the connective tissue that eight low hours turn into pure silk, and three big onions melting down beside them become the gravy without you doing a thing. The whole job is fifteen minutes at the bench before work — flour the chops, brown them, tip everything in — and you come home to a kitchen that smells like someone far more organised lives there. Spoon it over mash and watch the meat fall off the bone on the way to the plate.

The casserole Nan made, and she was right all along

Somewhere in most Australian families there's a casserole dish with fifty years of dinners in it, and more often than not the dinner inside was this one. Forequarter chops, onion, carrot and stock, a squirt of tomato sauce and a splash of Worcestershire, then the oven does the rest. No tricks, no watching the pot. Two hours later the meat slips off the bone into a gravy that tastes like it took far more effort than it did. This is the forequarter chop's home ground — and the easiest good dinner in your lamb share.

The big chop that was built for the backyard barbecue

There's a reason the forequarter chop has been the star of Australian backyard barbecues for generations — it's the chop with enough fat and flavour to handle real fire. A garlicky lemon-and-rosemary marinade, half an hour of soaking while you set the table, then onto a medium grill where the fat renders slowly and the edges catch and crisp. The trick is patience: this chop rewards the cook who doesn't rush it. Four chops, one bowl of marinade, and the kind of dinner that has everyone hovering around the barbecue before it's even done.

Chops, onions and a crisp golden potato lid — the north of England's greatest one-pot

The Lancashire hotpot earned its fame in the mill towns of northern England, where bone-in lamb chops, onions and potatoes were layered into a deep pot before work and collected, transformed, at the end of the day. The forequarter chop is the historically correct cut — cheap, bone-in, full of flavour — and the reward for your patience is the lid: overlapping potato slices brushed with butter that crisp into deep golden scales while everything underneath melts. It's a three-hour dish that wants ten minutes of skill and a lot of trust in your oven.

Sweet apricots, warm spice and lamb falling off the bone — no tagine pot required

Morocco has been slow-cooking the shoulder cuts of lamb with fruit and spice for about as long as anyone's been writing recipes down, and the combination still stops conversation at the table. Forequarter chops braise in a broth of cumin, coriander, cinnamon and a spoonful of honey until the meat surrenders, then dried apricots go in to plump up and turn the sauce glossy and sweet-savoury. A Dutch oven does everything the famous cone-lidded pot would. Toasted almonds on top, couscous underneath, and a weekend afternoon well spent.

Bone-in curry, the way Indian home kitchens have always made it

Ask an Indian home cook why they leave the bone in a curry and you'll get a look that says the question answers itself. The bone is the flavour. Forequarter chops simmered whole give this gravy a depth that boneless cubes never quite reach, the potatoes stretch four chops into a generous dinner, and every spice on the list comes from an ordinary supermarket shelf. It needs a couple of hours of gentle burbling, most of them unattended, and it repays you with a pot that tastes even better tomorrow.

One tray, four chops, and potatoes cooked in lamb fat

Some dinners are good because of what you do to them. This one's good because of what you don't. Potatoes and red onion get a head start in a hot oven, then the forequarter chops go on top and do the rest of the work for you — as they roast, their fat drips down and turns the potatoes underneath into the best version of themselves. One tray, no decisions, and the washing-up is a chopping board and a fork. It's the dinner we cook when the day has already taken everything else out of us.

The winter soup that makes its own stock

This is the old way of making soup, and it's still the best way. You don't need a carton of stock doing all the heavy lifting — the bones in four forequarter chops build the broth themselves, the way it was done before stock came in cartons. The chops simmer whole among the barley and vegetables for a lazy hour and a half, then the meat gets shredded off the bone and stirred back through. What you end up with is a pot of deeply savoury, faintly sweet lamb broth with plump barley and enough body to call itself dinner.

Lamb, potato, onion and patience — the stew that proves restraint is a skill

The original Irish stew had three ingredients and a fierce loyalty to all of them: bone-in forequarter or neck chops, potatoes, and onions, layered in a pot and left entirely alone. No browning, no wine, no clever additions — the courage of this dish is in what it leaves out. The bones make the broth, the bottom layer of potatoes melts into it as a thickener, and the top layer steams whole. Two hours later you ladle out something so much greater than its parts that you'll understand why the Irish never let anyone improve it.