Rosemary and Garlic Lamb Racks
Rosemary and garlic lamb rack with sweet potato mash and spinach.
Feeds 4
Cooking & prep time 30 mins
Ingredients
- 2 lamb racks (2 x 8 rib racks)
- 3 sprigs rosemary
- 2 cloves garlic
- Olive oil
- Sea salt
- Ground pepper
Optional sides
- 2 medium sweet potato
- 2 bunches English spinach
- Lemon juice
- Butter
Method
- Pre heat oven to 180 degrees.
- Remove lamb from fridge 30 mins prior to cooking, rinse with cold water and pat dry.
- Drizzle the meat with the olive oil, add crushed garlic, picked rosemary leaves and a good pinch of salt and pepper.
- Warm a heavy-based baking tray or oven-proof frying pan in which you will be cooking the lamb. When your pan is ready to sizzle, add the lamb racks skin-side down to brown and render the fat for 2 minutes. They will spit and protest a bit but that will help break the fat down so it melts into the meat.
- Turn and brown on all sides and ends of the lamb racks, about 1 min for each other side.
- When all sides are browned, arrange the lamb racks into a guard-of-honour in the frying pan/tray: all points of the cutlets should be interconnected and this will stand the racks up for cooking. Put the whole tray in the oven for 20 minutes (for medium), turning the pan/tray once if the oven is not fan forced. Cook longer if desired, but some pink in the middle is ideal for tender lamb.
- After elapsed cooking time, remove lamb from the oven and cover with foil in a warm place (not the oven) for 10 minutes to rest.
- After resting, remove foil from the lamb and cut each rack in half (if they are 8 ribs long) so each person gets four ribs joined together.
To cook sides:
- While the lamb is warming out of the fridge prior to cooking, peel and cut sweet potato into 1 inch slices. Add to cold salted water, cover and bring to the boil until the sweet potato is soft when you put a knife into it (about 15 mins).
- Mash sweet potato when cooked, adding butter and salt & pepper to taste. Leave pot covered on the side.
- While the lamb is resting after cooking, reheat the mash and prepare the spinach.
- To cook spinach, add washed spinach to a bit of butter in a pan and toss until wilted but not brown - this will only take 3-5 minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon juice if desired.