Inspired by this recipe from izzycooking.com!
Lately I have been cooking lamb more and more often. The reason is that my wife did not like lamb! Yes, you read it right, she DID NOT like lamb but now she does. She does like properly cooked lamb, from restaurants like Dishdash in Sunnyvale California but did not believe it was possible to prepare that level of quality lamb at home. Well, now she does like the lamb that I cook at home and below I will tell you my secret!
Sous Vide + proper seasoning.
Using the sous vide process, I have prepared a rack of lamb (1 hour at 131 F) and more recently Lamb Chops with excellent results. Below is the recipe for my last cooking session:
Lamb Chops with Potatoes
Ingredients/process:
- For the lamb and sous vide pack:
- 2-3 lbs of lamb chops (about 8-10 lamb chops, 1.5 inches cuts)
- 8-12 garlic cloves (at least one large head) cut in small pieces (1/4 in cubes)
- Fresh Thyme (5-10 small brunches) and marjoram if available
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- Salt (lightly sprinkled on meat)
- Black pepper (same)
- lemon juice from one big lemon
- Process:
- Season meat with salt and pepper and pack into a ziplog bag
- Add the minced garlic surrounding the meat, do the same with the herbs
- Mix lemon juice with olive oil and pour the content around and over the meat.
- Cook meat in the sous vide bath for 2-4 hours at 134 F for median (or 130 F for rare). Mine was cooked for 2 hours at 135 F. You can find temperature charts for sous vide by googling it. I recommend the 2 hours to make the meat more soft. A rack of lamb would not need 2 hours. You can find temperature chart here..
- Cook the potatoes following instructions below so they get ready almost at same time as the sous vide, you will need the sous vide pack to finalize the potatoes
- Cook the meat in a hot pan (next time I will also try to use a torch, my new toy), start from the bone part of the chop, then the other 2 faces of the "triangle, with special attention to cook the side that has a white cover really well, and then finalize the 2 surfaces, set it aside to rest.
- You will now make the glaze
- For the potatoes:
- Use small potatoes (3-4 per person)
- carrots (1 per perso) in pieces
- Garlic cloves 5-8
- Bay leaves 3-4
- Black pepper corns
- Salt (at taste)
- Process:
- Wash the potatoes but keep skin
- Remove skin from carrots and cute into 3 inches pieces
- Boil all the ingredients together until soft (a fork can be inserted on potatoes and carrots)
- Remove the veggies and save the soup to make a meat glaze
- Wait to finalize the potatoes until you have removed the meat from the sous vide packs
- Brown the garlic from sous vide pack and potato soup in butter, add the thyme and the potatoes and carrots to the same pan, add salt and pepper to taste
- Set aside to serve with the meat
- For the Meat Glaze:
- 1 cup of white wine
- Liquid from sous vide pack
- Soup liquid used to boil the vegetables
- Process:
- Pass the liquid from sous vide pack though a strainer to separate the garlic and herbs from liquid
- Boil the liquid from sous vide and remove and protein chunks that may form on top
- After you cook the meat, on the same pan, deglaze the pan with the a little bit of the vegetable soup. Pass that on a strainer to remove any burning pieces and clean the pan
- return the liquid to the pan, now you are going to add more vegetable soup and a more from the liquid from sous vide to create your glaze, meeting your taste
- You can than thicken that sauce with flour or corn starch and butter
- You can split the sauce in 2 and add wine to half of it (my daughter does not like the wine extra taste
- Some sites that talk about sauces: One for a steak pan sauce here, Chimichurri sauce, multiple ideas for lamb sauce here, and another Chimichurri here . Multiple ideas for using Sous Vide Juices here too and another one.
Variation from Oct2023: Mint marinate:
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 onion
- ¼ cup snipped (10-12 leaves) mint
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
- ¼ teaspoon salt
