In Spain and Italy, tender, milk-fed baby lamb is well-known and appreciated, and the best French butchers carry tiny agneau du lait from the Pyrenees. Here in the States, lamb that small is hard to find, but some small farms now market midsize spring lamb. Ask your butcher for the smallest racks he has. The rack is the tenderest cut of the beast and the easiest to cook.–David Tanis
LC Frenchie Note
When you request racks of lamb from your butcher, ask him nicely to also “french” them for you. The term refers to trimming the the bones of their unsightly gristle and membranes and other such unpleasantness, making them far more palatable, even a little elegant. All that remains for you to do is rub the racks with a simple herb paste, toss them in the oven, slice them into diminutive little chops, and gracefully accept the accolades.
Spring Lamb with Rosemary Recipe
Ingredients
- Two 8-bone racks of lamb, frenched
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 2 garlic cloves, mashed into a paste with a little salt
- Several sprigs of rosemary, leaves coarsely chopped
- Olive oil
Directions
- 1. Season the racks liberally with salt and pepper. Using your hands, rub each rack with the garlic, the chopped rosemary, and a drizzle of olive oil. Place the racks, fatty side up, in a roasting pan and leave them at room temperature for an hour or so.
- 2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (204° C).
- 3. Roast the racks for about 20 minutes, until they’re nicely browned and have an interior temperature of 125°F (51°C) on an instant-read thermometer for medium-rare. Remove from the oven, cover loosely with foil, and let rest for about 10 minutes. Turn off the oven and place a serving platter in the oven to warm.
- 4. Transfer the racks to a cutting board and carve them by slicing between the bones. Arrange the chops on the warm platter and serve.
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Delicious stuff, but my local grocer where I work…and get a discount…would sell me a rack of lamb for about $75. And two racks would be $150. While its possible that our local Costco might have these at less than $21/lb, all I have to say is…maybe a hamburger recipe would be more in line? Not many of us are the 1%, baby!
dontctallmechef, I think you’re being unfair and a little too narrow-minded for my tastes. We have 20 hamburger recipes. We have 242 recipes that use five or fewer ingredients, most of them don’t hit the wallet hard at the checkout. We have 138 Arsenal recipes, what we consider the building blocks of cooking–recipes worth mastering. Again, most are quite reasonable in the cost area. The site is filled with recipes that are inexpensive to make. If you’re judging the basis of what we do on one recipe, then you’ve clearly missed the bigger picture and what we stand for.
If it’s cheap recipes you want, there are plenty of sites out there, many not carefully curated filled with tons of untested or poorly tested recipes.
Hi dontcallmechef, yes I agree–lamb can be a luxury. But this recipe makes it worth your time to shop around for the best pricing. Costco does carry racks and they usually run around $12 a pound for a 2 pound rack. I’ve also found good pricing at Publix and in the frozen meat section of some stores. A bit of shopping savvy and we can all be in the 1%!
P.S. I just called the Costco in Richmond, CA. Rack of lamb comes in at $10.79 a pound. Considering an average rack is 1 1/2 pounds, that would be a total of about $32.00–$5 to $7 a serving. I think we’re now talking the 99%.