Gonna be quite challenging to get "1/2 cup of rendered sheep fat"

You need sheep with tail fat like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_fat

In Australia where lamb is more common than in the US, it'd be pretty easy to keep the fat after roasting a lamb shoulder, or to freeze the fatty offcuts from forequarter chops and render them after I had enough.

Lamb is quite popular down here in Australia. I usually keep some rendered fat from my roasts etc. Sometimes I cook other meats with it and it adds heaps of flavour. I do that with pork fat as well.

I was able to get some tail fat from a halal butcher. But never seen lamb fat anywhere else

if you have a good butcher they might be able to get you some that you can render, but its a hassle. I've done this for beef fat to make some british pie things.

Easy... Just go to a Trader's Joe, and get a lamb leg and roast it....

Lamb is usually the red meat of choice, other than pork, almost everywhere besides the US.

You should visit Europe.

We do eat a lot of lamb in Southern Europe.

Or Japan, or Canada, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Chile, or...

Yeah seems like a north and South America thing for the most part.

I was there for two months a month ago. Is it a lot of beef? I couldn’t really tell I remember a lot of pork and fish and chicken.

I’m not sure that it’s dominant anywhere other than Greece and the Balkans, but lamb would be quite popular in a lot of European countries. Pretty much anywhere on the Mediterranean, plus Ireland and Britain, at least.

I’m not sure there’s anywhere in Europe where it would be as unusual as it is in the US (where it definitely does seem to be seen as kinda vaguely exotic.)

I'd say that in Greece the dominant meats are pork and chicken. That's the main meat in all the grill houses and the meat in gyros and souvlaki. Lamb is beloved but eaten more rarely, particularly in religious feasts, especially Easter Sunday where the tradition is to put a lamb on a spit and eat everything off it down to the bones (except the entrails that are made in a special soup to end Lent, or various sweet meat skewers like kokoretsi, gardoumba, splinandero, etc). It's also more expensive than pork and chicken so it tends to be left for special dinners at home.

But, honestly, nothing beats a nice pilafi with lamb, with garlic wedges and slowly cooked until the meat falls off the bone.

I cant see why.