Yesterday, Jay and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. I wanted something special for dinner, something that was a bit of a splurge and something that would go with a beautiful bottle of d’Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz that we had received as a gift. Our usual luxury at home dinner is king crab legs, which clearly was not going to go with that beautiful bottle of red wine. Instead, I selected a rack of lamb. Now, I cook lamb quite often. Lamb chops, leg of lamb, lamb shanks (another of Jay’s favorite meals), but I had never made a rack of lamb before. But to a lamb-lovers, rack of lamb is like the prime rib to a beef-lover: It’s a fabulous hunk of meat. Typically, a rack of lamb will be about 8 bones and will weigh around 1 1/2 to 2 pounds. A single rack is the perfect amount for two people, a great intimate dinner. But I still had the big question: How to cook a rack of lamb. After watching a few seconds of several video’s, I hit on this great bit of information from a butcher about how to get this beauty ready for the oven.
Then I popped over to Epicurious.com. I rarely ever follow a recipe exactly, preferring to be stubbornly independent and insisting on doing it ‘my way.’ I never follow – I adapt. I knew that I didn’t want to muck this beautiful meat up with dijon mustard or crumb crusts. I wanted simple, and I wanted garlic. After trimming up the rack of lamb a little bit (I admit, I did follow the directions from that nice fellow in the video), this is what I did:
3 cloves fresh garlic
Small handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon fresh thyme (optional)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper
Use a Mini Food Processor to make a paste. Set aside.
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Heat a dry, heavy skillet over high heat about 2 minutes. (I use my All Clad 12-inch skillet.)
Pat the lamb dry and rub meat all over with kosher salt and black pepper.
Add a bit of olive oil to the skillet, then carefully place the rack in the pan, browning it on all sides. This should take about 6-8 minutes for each rack that you want cooked medium-rare. (About 2 minutes longer if you want to ruin the rack of lamb by cooking it to medium.)
Transfer the rack to a roasting pan (In retrospect, I could have just drained off the oil and left it in the skillet). Coat the lamb with the garlic and herb paste, pressing it to make it adhere to the meat. Roast 15 to 20 minutes until internal temperature reaches 120 degrees (130 degrees if you insist on medium). Remove lamb from pan, place on cutting board, and cover with aluminum foil about 10 minutes. Cut rack into single or double chops.
It was a brilliant, luscious meal. I’d love to hear about some of your favorite ways of making rack of lamb – or any kind of lamb. Share?
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