Simple Meat, Serious Sauce
When the meat is this good, the cooking should be brief and the sauce should do the talking. Salsa verde — parsley, mint, capers, anchovy and plenty of vinegar — is the ideal partner for lamb because its sharpness resets your palate between each rich mouthful. Make the sauce first so it has time to sit; it improves markedly over twenty minutes.
Ingredients
Serves 4 | Cost: $8.75 per serving | Total: $35.00 | Ready in 25 min
- 8 lamb loin chops, about 100 g (3½ oz) each
- Large bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked
- Small bunch fresh mint, leaves picked
- 3 tablespoons capers, drained
- 4 anchovy fillets
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 120 ml (½ cup) extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon beef tallow, for searing
- Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Make the salsa verde. Finely chop the parsley, mint, capers and anchovies together on a board until you have a coarse green mixture. Scrape into a bowl and stir in the vinegar, Dijon and olive oil. Season with black pepper and set aside for 20 minutes.
- Temper the chops. Take the lamb chops out of the fridge 20 minutes before cooking and pat them thoroughly dry. Season heavily on both sides with sea salt and black pepper.
- Sear hard. Heat the tallow in a heavy cast-iron pan over high heat until just smoking. Add the chops in two batches and sear for 3 minutes without moving them, until a dark crust forms.
- Turn and render. Flip the chops and cook for a further 2–3 minutes for medium-rare. Use tongs to stand them on their fat edge for 45 seconds so the fat renders and crisps.
- Rest and dress. Rest the chops on a warm plate for 5 minutes. Arrange on a platter, spoon the salsa verde generously over the top, and pour any resting juices back over before serving.
Nutritional & Dietary Notes
Dairy-Free
There is no milk, cream, butter or cheese in this recipe. Richness comes from the meat, the cooking fat and the aromatics rather than from dairy, which makes it a comfortable choice for anyone who is lactose intolerant or avoiding dairy altogether.
Gluten-Free
Every ingredient in this recipe is naturally free from wheat, barley and rye. If you are cooking for someone with coeliac disease, double-check any stock, sauce or spice blend you buy in, as gluten-containing thickeners and malt derivatives are common hidden additions in commercial products.
Keto
Carbohydrates are kept deliberately low here. The bulk of the energy in this dish comes from quality protein and natural fats, so it slots neatly into a ketogenic day without pushing you out of ketosis. If you are tracking closely, weigh any starchy vegetables and adjust the portion to suit your own daily carbohydrate target.
Paleo
This recipe sticks to whole, unprocessed ingredients: quality meat, vegetables, herbs, natural fats and spices. There are no grains, legumes, refined sugars or industrial seed oils, so it fits cleanly within a paleo framework.
Featured HOTRO.ca Product
This recipe is built around Lamb Loin Chops from HOTRO.ca. We source premium BC-raised and ethically farmed meats and slow-simmered bone broth, so the quality of the core ingredient does most of the work for you. Substituting a lesser product will change the result more than any other single change you could make to this recipe.
Hard-seared lamb loin chops served under a sharp, caper-heavy green herb salsa verde.