You can make a high-end restaurant-quality dish in minutes with this rack of lamb recipe. For years this has been one of my go-to’s for entertaining, and it always impresses. Kids devour it, and adults are thrilled at how easy it is to make. But it’s not just for special occasions. Keep this dish in mind for an easy family dinner. It takes five minutes to prepare the rack of lamb and about 30 minutes to cook. While it is cooking you can prepare a salad or warm soup for a first course, and serve cheese and bread, and fresh fruit for dessert. Your total meal prep time will be about 15 minutes.
The price of the lamb may seem expensive at first, but it isn’t when you calculate the price of the entire meal. Lamb, salad, soup, or some potatoes with fruit for dessert can be less than the price of carry-out—under $12 per person, depending on what else you serve. The cost of the lamb is around $8 per person, assuming two chops per person. You don’t need much when you balance this with a few other dishes, like salad, bread and cheese, and fruit.
If you have a little more time, you can roast potatoes or make French fries to go with it. And a Caesar salad is always the perfect complement.
Print1 rack of lamb
3 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons Celtic or sea salt
Fresh ground pepper
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Using a mini food processor, blend the rosemary, garlic, and salt until they are well minced. Add the mustard and blend again until well combined. Each step takes about a minute.
Place the lamb in a roasting pan and coat the top of the rack of lamb with the rosemary mustard puree and fresh ground pepper.
Tip: If you are not opposed to cooking with tinfoil, lining the dish makes clean up easy.
Roast the lamb for 30 minutes for medium rare. You can increase or decrease the time by 5 minutes See the notes below for more details.
Allow to sit for 10- 15 minutes before slicing.
Slice between the ribs to serve the lamb.
French Carrot Purée is excellent with rack of lamb.
Although this recipe is very quick and simple to prepare, you may also like this even simpler version, Herbed Rack of Lamb.
Lamb is the most forgiving meat in that it is not dried out if it is overcooked, so you don’t have to worry about overcooking it. Also note that the ends will be more well done than the center, giving you a variety of rare to more well-done slices, depending on how long you cook it.
The success of any dish starts with the quality of the ingredients. You can find a rack of lamb at your local butcher’s shop. I often buy lamb chops for this recipe at Costco. The brand is Rastelli's, and the price is very reasonable. Rastelli's is:
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