Name: Lamb Birria
Yield: Serves 4-6
Cuisine: Mexican
Ingredients: 3 whole cloves; 1 level teaspoon cumin seeds; 1 level tablespoon dried oregano; 4 bird’s eye chillies; 7 good hard garlic cloves, peeled; 1 large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped; 125 ml cider vinegar; 2 kg lamb’s neck, leg or shoulder meat, off the bone; 1 small onion, peeled; 1 level tablespoon large-flaked sea salt; flour and water paste, for sealing the pot; 10 black peppercorns; 6 dried pasilla or ancho chillies; 6 dried guajillo or guanjillo chillies; 10 bay leaves

Preparation info

Serves
4-6

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

What to Eat Now (Autumn & Winter)

By Valentine Warner

Published 2008

About

In parts of Mexico it can get very cold. The backbone to Lamb Birria is a combination of dried chillies, which produces a fabulous slow burn that will creep out to your extremities, warming them with a very pleasant heat. Although many varieties of dried chilli are available in a few supermarkets and specialist shops in the UK, obtaining them still involves a certain amount of tapping about on the internet. Proper Mexican food is only just beginning to flash its gold tooth in this country,