How to Make a Stuffed Rack of Lamb

Let me start up and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table. Normally, you, like I said, you do see Susan here with me, but she is not going to be joining us today. Hopefully next week she will be back in action with us. Today I'm going to make a rack of lamb, and a rack of lamb is not as difficult to make as you might think. It's kind of a special item. It's a specialized item. You'll find it on some of the finer restaurant menus, and it's traditionally done pretty simply. It's not like it's really a lot of different things going to make it. It's a simple dish. You let the lamb speak for itself. And today we're going to stuff it a little bit though, and there's a lot of different ways you can go with the stuffing, but we're going to— I'm going to show you one way that I like to make it. Actually a little bit different. So the first thing we're going to start with today is we're going to get our— before we even touch the lamb, is I want to get some of the items for the stuffing ready because that's an important factor. And I'm going to do— turn on my induction cooker, and we're actually going to cook back here. We're going to cook some spinach in it and let the spinach sweat down because that's going to be an item for us in the stuffing today. I just put a little bit of oil in there. And sometimes you make things based on what you have available. And today, stuffing, I did not have any shallots. I have onions and I have scallions. So I decided instead of onions, I'm going to put a little bit of scallion in. Not normally something I would use. Like I said, I would probably use a shallot and stuff, but I didn't have any and it was pouring today, so I opted not to go out to pick some up. So I'm just going to have— generally I have shallots in, and a lot of times I just use them for garnishing. She made a very nice tangerine beef yesterday that I had them in here for. So we're going to put these in because they're going to add a nice little hint of onion without it being overpowering. We're also going to do spinach in here. Turn that down, and while it's just kind of simmering a little bit, let's come back here. And I'll show you, I did cut up my little, little bit of scallion there, put them in. I'm also going to cut up a piece of garlic, throw that in there. I want a heavy garlic flavor, but I do want to have a little bit of garlic in it. All right, and then I also have these little tomatoes, and I wanted to add some color, put it down peppers. I thought, you know, it might be nice just to see a little bit of a grape tomato in here. And I'm just cutting them in half, or if they're big, maybe cut them in quarters. And I just want to add these in and cook them briefly because there's a lot of liquid in tomato, and I don't want them to really cause a lot of extra running into the stuff. All right, it's good. Let's go back to the pot. There you can see we have a nice little colorful mix already. I don't need to cook it a whole lot. I just want to try and sweat out some of the liquid. Here's a good opportunity to season it as well, and I'm going to put in a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper. All right, go from there. And then just let this— and I don't have a lot of oil in the pan because I don't want this to be greasy. I just want to give it enough to get some heat into it, let it start to wilt and have a nice color. Because again, we eat with our eyes. It's— color is important. And generally, color— more colorful vegetables are better for you too. So that's a good thing to remember. Get a bowl to put that in. All right, that's pretty much done, so let me turn this off. And put this in a bowl. We're going to let it cool so it'll be ready for the rack. All right, there we go. Put that off to the side. Just going to rinse this just a little bit. Oops, sorry. Okay, so put that down, quick wipe. I love these kitchen towels. I buy these by the 24 at a big box store at Sam's Club, and when I use them for whatever I use them for, they only cost about $10. And when they start to get too frayed, I throw them out because I don't feel bad about it. All right, so the pot's ready for our next phase of it. So while that is cooling, let's move over to the lamb. I'll show you what we're going to do with the lamb. Now, rack of lamb, this is actually not a real heavy piece. This is a New Zealand lamb, and you'll find New Zealand lambs usually a little lighter than American lamb. It's a, it's more of a delicate flavor. It's not quite as overpowering, so it's, it's really nice to use. And this is enough for one person. Lisa does not eat lamb, so She'll taste it, but she's not going to eat it. So I'm only making one for me today, and she will have something else tonight. But what you want to do is you want to clean it up a little bit. And these things right here, this is called like silver skin. I want to try and find that and get rid of that when possible because that's going to be very hard to eat, and it's going to sinewy, and it's not going to be a pleasant experience. So if you can come in here, if you find too much of it anywhere, you don't have to take every little piece of fat off. That's okay. You do want to take things off that are going to not be enjoyable. All right, now when you roast this, if you're just going to roast this plain, you could leave this little bit of layer of fat on. It's not a lot, but I'm going to take it off. And I've got a boning knife here, and then I just kind of simply lift it. As I lift it, it pulls away. You almost don't have to cut Yeah, that just pulls right away. And then as you get closer in, and you do have to cut again, you could leave this on, but I don't really want there to be any real fat on it. And again, this is not a good piece. This is not something here that you're going to want to try and chew through. So if this can come off, the silver skin, it's even better. It'll make it a better experience. So a lot of times you can pull it. If not, you just want to kind of let gravity help you lift it up. If it doesn't pull off by itself, get under it some way. And the bigger the piece you can start with, usually the better off you are. There we go. This is going to be a nice clean piece of meat. Going to cook it a little bit on the rare side when I finish it. Will be very rare, but it'll be— won't be overdone, so it'll be tasty and tender. Okay, you need to be careful what you take off too, because sometimes you're taking off too much. You don't want to pull meat out of there as well. So we're just going to leave that be and clean this up just a little bit around the bones. Now you'll notice that there is nothing around these bones, and that's a very good thing because you really really don't want to be Frenching these yourself. This is something left for somebody that's got some time or some skill sets. And one of the nice things about where I bought these— and I bought these at Sam's Club because they're a lot less expensive there than they are at a grocery store. This was— this 2 racks was $20 as opposed to 30-some dollars at a grocery store. All right, so that's pretty much all we need to do for that. That's done. And they are pretty good quality pieces of lamb, so you'll enjoy this. All right, so here we have that. I'm going to turn my induction cook back on and put a little bit of oil in it. And right here, all I'm going to do is I'm going to salt it. Pepper. Again, very simply seasoned. I'm doing this side too. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to sear the meat just enough to seal it up and to get it to keep the juice in, to help keep the juices in. So we want the pan pretty hot at this point, so let's turn it back to here. And you just want to be careful when you're doing this because the grease will pop up. I actually am using a deeper pan just to help for the spatter to keep from spattering on the computer and everything, but you could use a regular sauté pan. But for me, sometimes this is a preventative. All right, so as it gets hot, we'll spread around. Doesn't take too long on induction. I'm just going to place it down and you should be able to hear that sizzle. You only want to let it sear for about 30 seconds, 45 seconds, just enough to really get that in. It's going to stick, so you want to kind of loosen it if you can, run the oil around it, get it in there. You don't want it to cook too thoroughly through, uh, because we're going to finish it in the oven with the stuffing, but we want to get it sealed so as much of the juices will stay in as possible. All right, flip it over. You can see how nice that is already. Just a little bit more oil in there. We just want to get a nice little seal on the meat. Mmm, smell. And like I said, this is New Zealand lamb, so it doesn't have that overpowering smell or flavor. And these can easily be made into lollipops too if you wanted to serve them as an appetizer. So now I'm just going to hold it up and I'm going to sear the edges. It's not a very thick piece of meat. So it won't take a lot of time to cook in the oven, just basically enough time to get the stuffing nice and hot and get it finished. And again, uh, you want to eat it a little bit on the rarer side. It doesn't have to be completely cooked through. So Now you could do the whole thing in the oven and roast it. This is just something that I think adds a little to the quality of the dish. Could just be me, but it's not like it's a big deal to do. And if you were doing these— if you were just doing them individually as lollipops too, you could just sear them on both sides briefly. Hit this side just a little bit more. Hit them on both sides briefly, season them, put them to the side, put them in the refrigerator. If you have people coming over, pop them in a really hot oven for a couple minutes just to heat them up. And what color are you really looking for in the sear? I'm not looking so much for a color, Megan, as I'm looking for just to see that it is cooked. Now you can see I got a little bit of color there. It doesn't necessarily need to have color because it's going to finish in the oven and I am going to stuff it, but I do want it to be kind of cooked, kind of sealed, because it— like I said, it's not cooked, it's just sealed. That's a better way to explain it. All right, so yeah. All right, so now I'm done with this sauté pan. This is off. I'm going to move this back to the stove, and we're going to get back to working. Actually, while I'm working on my stuffing, Let me start the demi-glace too. The stuffing isn't going to be very difficult to make. So for the demi-glace, very simple. I'm going to do is make a reduction, and I'm going to put just a little bit of garlic in it. And you could use some onion or shallot in here too if you have it. Again, I said I apologize for not going out in the rainstorm for shallots. It's always nice to do too. Shallots are a wonderful flavor. If you haven't experienced one with them, give them a try because it's kind of a nice soft balance between onion and garlic, and it's great for sauces. Gives it another depth of flavor. I'm just going to cut this just a little bit, put a little bit of garlic in. All right, let's turn this on. A little bit of oil. I just want to sauté this just a little bit and just have it start to sweat down. And because you don't want to put raw garlic in anything, you always want to cook. If I was making a sauce, just boiling it in the water is not the same as getting a little sauté under it and letting some of the liquid cook out of it a little bit. I hope that answered your question, Megan. All right, so for the demi-glace, this is a beef stock. Uh, one thing you're going to do to finish it with is I'm going to finish this in the oven, and when I finish it in the oven, I'm going to have some, uh, fat cook off from the lamb, and I'm going to save that to add to this demi-glace just to give it a little bit more more of a lamb flavor. Because right now I'm working with a beef stock, so it's not going to be tasting as much as lamb. So I'm gonna put this in here, put that beef stock in there, and I'm also going to use some red wine. Nice. So that's going to be my demi-glace for this. And you know, you could put a variety of different liquors in your— liquor, not liquors, but alcohol or wine in yours, uh, to develop a different flavor that you would like. But this is what I'm using. So all I'm going to do is let this cook. I'm just going to crank it up a little bit and let it reduce. So let's leave this here and let it reduce. And while it's reducing, let's go to our stuffing. Okay, so now what we see here, and I want another Actually, we're going to do it this way. There's still some liquid in here, and I want to try and get rid of more of this liquid. So I'm just going to push it down a little bit, squeeze out the spinach. I want it to be bone dry, but I don't want it to have a lot of extra liquid in it. You can see there's not terrible amount of liquid, but there's enough to make a difference. Put this back in here. All right, now very simply, I'm gonna adjust this to what I want to make for tonight. Now this is where you can have some fun with your stuffing, okay? I used to use ground lamb in some. You can put cheese in it. And today I'm going to put— I'm not going to put ground lamb in, but I'm going I'm also going to put some blue cheese in because I wanted to see how that tasted with— I'm thinking this is going to be a nice complement to the lamb. Traditionally, you would probably use feta or goat cheese, but I wanted to push it a little bit and add another layer of flavor in this. And again, this is where you make it your own. Now I'm going to add in some breadcrumbs. These are Panko, which you could put in just about anything you want, any type of breadcrumbs, or you could even use like a stuffing mix. Now I'm not going to add a whole egg. If I was making more stuffing, like maybe 2, I would. I'm just going to put the yolk in there, and I'm going to use that to help bind it a little bit. We're going to put that stuffing in here, and as it sits, this is going to absorb more— the panko will absorb more of the egg. So right now it looks a little bit wet, but it's not as wet as it's really going to be. Just a bit more blue cheese in there because I love blue cheese. Okay, so that's the stuffing. And again, you could go in a lot of different directions with the stuffing. You could use feta, you could use Gorgonzola. You could use goat cheese. You could use, uh, Gruyère or anything else that you like. You could use broccoli rabe instead of spinach. You could use collards. You could use another kind of green. You could add some ground lamb into that if you wanted to. There's a lot of different things you can do with this stuffing. So this is just another vehicle, another layer to add to your rack of lamb.. And in fact, you could serve it without the stuffing altogether. All right, so now what I'm going to do is we have it. Now, this is the back side of the rack, but before I put it in, what I'm going to do just to kind of help, help it out here is I'm just going to score the back of this just a little bit, just so it makes it a little bit easier to do. It doesn't curl up on me. Because sometimes you'll find them, they'll curl up as they heat. So if I can just nick them a little bit, keep them from doing that, I'll make it look a little nicer. Not a big deal. Okay, so I'm going to stuff it right in this little crevice. I'm going to leave some of the lamb showing. I don't want to cover completely. I can come down here on the bone a little bit more. So here's my vegetable with my lamb. Nice side dish. It's going to be tasty. And this is ready to go. So say you're having a party and you want to prepare these ahead of time. This is easy enough to do, prepare ahead of time, and you can put them in the refrigerator. You can come home to them. And finish them in the oven, and you'll have a lovely, lovely dinner party entertainment. And there's a lot of different ways to prepare this. You know, you could, like I said, stuff it with different things. This is just going to go in the oven now for probably about 20 minutes, uh, 375, 400 degrees, 15, 20 minutes. And I'm going to temp it because this is going to cook pretty quick, the top part. We want the lamb to come out and still be a little pink. Hey John, thanks for stopping by. We want it to still be a little pink on the inside. Remember, it doesn't have to be completely gray and cooked because it's going to have a little more flavor if you don't overcook it. All right, so let's come back to my demi-glace, and this is reduced pretty well. This is down, oh, about at least by half. Okay, it's building some flavor there. And now to finish this demi-glace— and again, the demi-glace, you could serve it numerous ways. You could put some mushrooms in it if you wanted to. If you want it to be more traditional too, I don't have any rosemary in this dish at all, but if you wanted to be more traditional, you can include a little rosemary. You could put some in here to give it a little flavor. There's a lot of different ways you can go. So right now what I'm doing is I'm rolling some butter in flour to thicken this up, and that's what we refer to as a beurre meunier, and it's adding some butter into it, and the flour is just going to help thicken the sauce up a little bit too. A little bit more flavor to it. And you could use peppercorns in this. All I have is a little bit of garlic, but like I said, a little shallot would be wonderful. I'm just going to let that reduce down a little bit more. And when your sauce is done, you can strain it. It'll be a little bit thicker. It's starting to come down now. Let me grab a spoon and I'll show you. As it starts to reduce— still not quite there. It still needs to reduce a little bit longer because it should be thick enough that it'll kind of coat the back of the spoon. And that's when you know it's got a nice consistency to it. So again, remember, when the lamb is done, to give it more of a lamb flavor and to build another layer into it, I'm going to add some of the lamb fat that's going to cook off into the pan. And that's— you don't need to put a whole lot in because it's going to give it that pronounced lamb flavor from the fat. And this you can let it normally take its time reducing. It's not something you have to push, push, push. So I could leave this on and just let it simmer, let it cook down, watch it, watch it get thicker. And even at this point, you know, you could add different items to your demi-glace depending upon, you know, it's not a traditional demi-glace, but it doesn't matter. It's what you like to eat. So if your sauce, if you didn't want to put, say, the blue cheese or the gorgonzola into the stuffing, you can always add just a little bit into the sauce at in and cream it, or you could put a little sour cream into it or a little heavy cream into it and cream it out a little. So there's a lot of different ways you can go, and it's experimenting and it's having fun. It's starting to get a little thicker, so I'm not quite there. And I could always add just a little bit more butter into it too, because you have to be careful when you reduce, because if you reduce too much, it's going to get salty. Uh, if you add too much fat, it's not really going to ruin the flavor. It just might get a little greasy and start to break. So if that's the case, like if your sauce ever does start to break, a hot sauce, if you put a little piece of ice in it or some cold water, that'll help bring it back a little bit. Okay, so this is going to sit, and actually I'm going to use this tonight when we have dinner. So I'm going to let it finish then. But I did add just a little bit more butter to it, and you can see it's almost there. With the demi-glace, so you want it to be a little bit thicker. It's not like it's a loose gravy, it's more like it's going to almost stay stationary on the plate when you put it on. Okay, so that's it. Now, you know, like I said, there's other things you can do to season the, uh, the lamb. If you wanted to add a little bit more distinction or flavor to it, then you could always— I have some Dijon mustard here. You'd always put a little bit of Dijon on if you want the lamb to have a little bit of a crust or a little flavor. These are other things you can do. I have a little bit of Montreal steak seasoning, which is pretty much just cracked black pepper. And you could even put in a little more panko. So when it comes out, it'll have a little more distinct appearance. You could just do the whole thing with that and forget the stuffing. Okay, so that's, that's all, just to give it a little bit more distinction, a little bit more appearance. So this will go in the oven. And again, keep— get a meat thermometer if you don't have one. A meat thermometer is something you should have.. And you can check it very simply by putting it— they're digital now, so they read instantly. And for lamb, you probably, if it was going to be medium rare, you'd want it around 130, 140, in that range. You don't want to let it get any higher than that because it's going to be too well done. So try it that way. Again, you could always cut this up individually and do some seared lamb pops. Yeah, palali pops. Or you can serve it just the way it is. You could actually split this too. Say you wanted to do something different and do a kind of a surf and turf, you could have cut this in half before you stuffed it or before you cooked it and had a half a rack along with some, a piece of fish or some shrimp. So, you know, there's all kinds of things you can do. And my stuffing ingredients, we'll go over that a little bit again. It is sautéed spinach and in the spinach I put in some garlic. I had some scallions because I don't have any shallots around, so I use those instead. And then I put in some blue cheese, but you could use feta, you could use gorgonzola, you could use almost any kind of cheese that you would like in there. And I also put in some panko breadcrumbs. Oh, and some tomatoes. I put some— and the tomatoes are in there mostly for color, not a deal breaker. You could use some roasted red peppers if you like. Or some fresh peppers if you want to put in some colorful strips. So there again, just to break up, just to attract the eye, just to add some color, because we eat with our eyes. And a lot of what we do, you know, our interest in something comes from the appearance of it besides the flavor. Our first decision is made when we see something. So then we know we might like it. We make a decision based on what it looks like. And then after that, the aroma hits it, so that kind of starts to seal the deal. And then the last part of it is the taste, and the taste will help you finish deciding that you enjoy it or you don't enjoy it. You could use— yep, you— we talked about that. You can use any kind of leafy green, and I have the seat open if anyone wants to pop in and ask a question. We'll be here for a few minutes. Um, any kind of leafy green you want. I have some rapini in there. I'd actually thought of using that. But I'm going to use that as a side dish because like I said, my wife won't eat this. So I'll save that for a nice side vegetable. But I use spinach because it's— doesn't have a lot of its own flavor, which is sometimes a good thing because I didn't want to rob it and I wanted to add— that was one of the reasons I put the blue cheese in, because the greens didn't have a lot of prominent flavor. So if you go with a more bitter green, you might want to balance it with a softer cheese. Then maybe I'd use the goat cheese. Or a light feta. But because it's spinach, I wanted it to have a little more kick, and that's why I use the blue cheese. So think about your ingredients. But again, it's all what you like to eat. I mean, if you wanted to blacken this lamb and then stuff it, you know, that's okay. It's about what you like to eat. I mean, actually, we're probably pretty good blackened, come to think of it. It's what you like to eat and what will please you. But getting in the kitchen and trying different things and experimenting with some things is what's going to make it fun for you and it's going to get you in the kitchen more to cook and, you know, get in with someone else to help you do and have fun with. So our rack of lamb, again, buy it frenched. If they don't have it frenched at your store, ask the butcher to french it for you. Let him do the work. Don't come home and beat yourself up. I did take all the fat off of it. Some people will tell you to leave it on. Again, it's a personal decision being I don't want anything to interfere with me eating with it. Eating it. I took it off, I seared it for just about a minute on each part of the meat just to get it sealed to help keep the juices in a little bit more. And it's, it's pretty easy. So if I was at a dinner party, you could actually have some fun and have someone else helping you making the stuffing while someone's searing the meat. And you can, you know, have a glass of wine, enjoy yourself, get everything set up, put them on a sheet pan, put it in the refrigerator, and then tomorrow when your people come over, you know, pop them out, wrap them up, pop them out, put them in the oven for a little while. You can start your demi-glace, get it semi-thickened, and then just finish it off on the stove. Be a really nice flavorful dish to make for either to change up— it's a good week— weekend meal. I say weekend because it's a little bit more expensive, or a good dinner party meal. So thank you for coming around the kitchen table. I hope you enjoyed it. We're on every Wednesday at 12:05. We start off at 11 with Renee Bowdy, who does vegan style dishes, and then we'll be back at 1:15 with Christine Thomas, our vegan pastry chef. And today she's making a vegan celebratory cake. So I hope you join us around the kitchen table. And Susan, Sarah, if you're watching it, Feel better, and I hope to see you next week. Bye-bye.