If you recall from the Reverse Seared Lamb post a little bit ago, I bought a whole rack and butcher pieced it out for me. This is round two of probably a 6-7 round fight. Website needs content, right? So I did some searching around and tried to do a marinated recipe this time. The last round was so juicy and tender on its own, I really didn’t need it any tenderness. This was to impart a different flavor. So let’s roll with it!
Blog fail: I can’t find the base recipe I used for this one. Rather than guess what I did, I’ll leave it to y’all to make with it what you will. Bottom line: Soaked it in some olive oil, white wine vinegar, crushed garlic cloves, some mint, rosemary – and honestly, some random leaf that smelled good in the backyard. Marinated it, threw it on the grill and garnished with some leaves. I’m writing this a couple weeks after I cooked it, and therefore, failed you in the recipe.
Update (2022): Recipe added
The Prep Table
Wife was gone (backpacking. again.) so I had full reign of the kitchen. Went to the local shop and picked up some (kinda) fresh mint. Wasn’t the best thing I found, but I went with it. Plucked some rosemary from MrsForensicBBQ’s plant and made me a marinade. Here’s where I’ll mention that MrsForensicBBQ does an AWESOME job tending to our yard. We’ve grown so many plants and flowers – some work, some don’t.. but this rosemary plant gets used so often! Love you dear xo.
We were going to let the lemon/mint/white wine vinegar work its magic for this one. I had a terrible marinade situation a couple months ago and was hesitant to rock an overnight marinade again. Also, I knew I didn’t need any more tenderness for this cut. So we were going to let this soak for about 3-4 hours and then get to cooking. Chop it up, squeeze it, and gallon-bag it and let it relax until showtime.
Something I like to do before introducing the meat to the juice… smell yo marinade. Seems like a silly step, but know what you’re about to do. This smelled so fresh and outstanding – I was excited to use it. That should be the result. If you got some funk, or something ain’t right – fix it before you go. Seems like a silly step to mention, but you come here for TRUTH 🙂
After a little bit, pull it from the bag and give it that smell test again. Cooking is an all-senses project, might as well use ’em! I couldn’t wait to get these on the smoker. We were going reverse sear again, because have a hard time just doing straight grill after knowing the product reverse searing gives. That being said – Prep is over, let’s get to the process.
The Process
So – Sometimes I’ll do a rinse or pat-down of the marinade before I go to the grates. When I pulled these from the Ziploc, I see some rosemary sprigs, some mint leaves, even some lemon seeds on there. I thought why not leave it on there. You should know by now (over a year of posts!) I’m not the best at these pictures, but I’m getting better. I know what looks good to me, and I hope that translates to what looks good for you.
As per usual, 225 degrees until about 20ish degrees shy of goal temperature. Even when I was transporting these to the grates, I was getting flashbacks to the minty lamb I had as a child. I remember the mint jelly, but I wasn’t going for a complete minty taste overload like the jelly does. Remember, I’m still trying to find my lamb happy-place, this is a new cook – gotta find what works. Anyway, to the grates:
Once we hit about 110 degrees, I pulled it off and didn’t see too much smoke color on there. Didn’t look too much different than when I threw them on, but I used that trusty ThermaPen on all of them and knew they were cooked through. Sometimes, you gotta trust the temp vs. the look. That’s what I did here.
I’ve mentioned my love for GrillGrates every time I do a reverse sear, and today is no different. I’ll pull some words from their site: “GrillGrates sit on top of existing pellet grill surfaces and turn pellet smokers into pellet grills by radiating an additional 200F of heat at the cooking surface. The patented design traps and concentrates the heat conducting it up the rails for searing while the valleys sizzle juices for added flavor, moisture, and tenderness That’s why we call pellet grill sets “Sear Stations.” The results are bold sear marks AND great sizzle like you would get on a traditional grill. We do not recommend full coverage on pellet grills as it can impair the airflow.”
That’s why you’ll see I’ll offset my GrillGrates to one side of the grill. I let them get heat while I’m in the smoking phase, crank the pellet smoker to about 450 (I don’t like doing going to that RecTeq “FUL” (full) for personal reasons) and then sear them off. Like I did below:
I don’t remember when I took this picture – probably somewhere near the beginning of the sear. They’re only on for about 5-10 minutes max – Let them sit for about 3-4 minutes, flip. Repeat and then cook until that temperature is where you want them – in my case around 135. We got ’em seared, let’s see how they turned out.
The Result
If you’ve already scrolled, you’ll have spoiled it – but there’s a considerable change from the last picture to the final. You’ll see that color really grabbed onto the meat, the bone has that char – but because I went medium rare, it does have that “loose” look to them. If you haven’t scrolled, get it:
Okay, these were better than the last Lamb post, so we’re getting somewhere. I didn’t notice much difference in the tenderness, and that’s probably due to the fact these were so tender to begin with. The flavor was light and pleasant – best way I can describe it. Absolutely nothing was overpowering, just everything worked in proportion. Definitely try this out if you’re looking for something different than traditional grilled lamb, but nothing that will overpower you.
Thanks again to Messina Meats for this cut. Made me a very happy individual eating these. I’ll probably be prepping another round of grilled lamb by the time time this posts – Someone gave me an awesome suggestion on Instagram that I can’t wait to try.
On an administrative note, I went through and tried to fix the novice in some previous posts. We’ve come a long way ?. I’m going to go back and try to add some recipes to the old ones – like everyone’s favorite Candy Bacon, so expect a bit of a slowdown during the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays. Thanks for visiting! Again, apologies for the non-recipe!
The Recipe
Lemon-Mint Marinated Lamb
