How do you safely defrost a whole lamb?

Question

Some supermarkets sell a whole lamb.

The food safety rules for meat dictate defrosting in the fridge, never at room temperature.

The next-size down, a turkey, doesn't even take 24 hours to defrost. It takes either 48 or, if very large, 72 hours to defrost.

How do you reconcile these two rules? In other words, how do you defrost a whole lamb before cooking it?

1. Is this meant for chefs who have a fridge that will fit a lamb?
2. Are folks meant to start roasting it while it's frozen? I doubt it would cook through, no matter how gentle the fire.
3. Do birds (turkey, ..) require special attention because they spoil particularly rapidly, and for a lamb one would get away with defrosting at room temperature? Would 24 hours do it? Would that be actually safe?

I suppose if it's October or March, then defrosting outside in some regions at +5C might work, except that the temperature outside is never constant, which doesn't help much (with either defrosting or with food safety), and that you'd have to stand guard overnight to make sure no other wild animal discovers what feast is ready for them.

Answer 1

There is another food safe option to thaw meat quickly, and it has saved the Thanksgiving meal of many cooks: In cold water. To ensure that the meat stays in a safe temperature range, frequently changing the water is required, ideally by running the cold water tap just a bit. The meat itself will act like a huge ice cube, contributing to keeping the surrounding water cool.

Facing the task of defrosting the lamb in question, I would probably resort to my bathtub, because it is like an oversized kitchen sink, complete with faucet and drain and can be sanitized easily afterwards.

Cold water thawing is messier and needs more attention than just thawing in the refrigerator, but will on the other hand be significantly faster and needs no hacking up of a frozen slab of meat.

The rule of thumb is thirty minutes per pound of meat, but that’s really just a rough estimate, geometry, water temperature and movement and ratio of water to food will be factors.

Answer 2

Food safety rules are written around the ways bacteria reproduce, not around the chefs' convenience. There is no difference in the speed of getting unsafe between different types of meat (or any other type of non-shelf-stable food). Yes, the lamb is also meant to be defrosted in the fridge. And cooking from frozen is indeed not an option.

So yes, you are meant to defrost it in the fridge. You could do it whole, or you could remove parts of it while still frozen and defrost these, then cook, while the rest stays in the freezer. If you don't have the equipment to do either of that, then your kitchen is simply not ready to deal with buying a whole lamb.

I don't doubt that there are many people who buy it and defrost it outside of the fridge, they just either don't know the food safety rules or make the decision to not follow them.

Answer 3

If the restaurant in question has a walk-in cooler (an insulated room that is cooled to fridge temperatures), the lamb could be defrosted there.