Cooking time for rack of lamb

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megaduff

Assistant Cook
Joined
Mar 25, 2022
Messages
3
Location
Liverpool
Hi all,

Looking for some advice for a recipe I want to try but haven't had experience of.

I've just bought 2 racks of lamb (already French cut, with the bones showing) from my butcher, both weighing around 500g each, just over 1kg in total and wondered what the cooking process/time should be.

I asked my butcher and he said to pre-heat my fan oven to 220 degrees Celsius (about 430 f) for 10 minutes, then lower it to 160 degrees Celsius (320 f) and cover the racks in foil and cook for 40-45 minutes. Then remove the foil and cook for another 40.

To me this seems like a real excessive amount of time for a lamb rack and checking videos out on YouTube, most people are cooking it for around 20 minutes (at a slightly higher temperature). So over an hour just seems like it will give me far too well-done meat (I prefer medium, medium-rare in lamb).

Can anyone advise? Which method would you recommend? I know I'm doing 2 at the same time in the same oven, so maybe that would necessitate the need for longer roasting, but I just don't want to end up with an overdone dish.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks,
Chris
 
I agree, that is waay too long. Not that I have done a lot of racks. LOL maybe one or two?

But if memory serves me correctly, I believe I was doing 2 racks of 3 ribs each.

-Dry well, oil, press well with your spice/herb mixture.
-Brown all around in a hot pan, should not take very long, but do the two ends, the rounded side, flat side.
-Then leave the rack resting with the curved ribs facing down (making a little tunnel?)

now you can either leave it on the stove top (hob) to finish or pop in a preheated oven. I believe I left mine on the stove top (maybe I covered loosely with foil?) and here I'm afraid - I don't remember for how long. I doubt it was more than 10-12 minutes? Remember the meat is arched above the heat, so it is sort of like putting it in an oven.

Do you have a termometer? 125 f - rare, 135 f medium rare. Go 5/10 degrees below as temp will rise while resting.

Here's a website that also gives directions for complete oven cooking - (an ad for a thermopen :rolleyes:) perfect rack of lamb

you might find more info at another site - New Zealand Lamb

Hope this helps, good luck, I'm jealous, been long since I've had some, very pricy here.
 
Welcome to DC, megaduff. :)

I cook a fair amount more individual lamb chops, than racks, these days. Our Aldi offers them frequently.

Both items are cooked the same, in my kitchen.
Marinade or rub, brown quickly in hot CI skillet, finish, in that same skillet in a 350F oven, to an internal temp of 125F. Resting will raise the temp to a, perfect for us, med-rare.

Total time is less than 20 minutes cooking.

Ross
 
Thank you for your kind welcomes and for the advice!

Yes, I just didn't think that small cuts of lamb would need that long in at all, so I'll give it a go for around 20 minutes or so in the oven after a good sear in a hot pan! I think I will try it with Gordon Ramsay's herb crust for a bit of a twist too. With that one though, I think he puts it back in the oven to crisp up the herb mixture too for about another 5 minutes so will see where that gets me!

I have just ordered a cheap meat thermometer which I will aim to pick up before Sunday. It's for a Mother's Day lunch so I definitely don't want to mess this one up!

I guess that means I'll have to re-think the timings on accompaniments too and start the potatoes/veg a bit earlier than planned to be ready around the same time as the lamb.

Thanks again for all your help
 
Yup, your timing should work out well, remembering your resting time.

OMG... you had me running for the calendar! :ROFLMAO: Mother's Day... I missed the lunch part. Thankfully still have almost 2 months!
 
I wish I still had two months to prepare for this one! Unfortunately for me, it's a one shot attempt tomorrow, but fingers crossed it will still go well!
 
I vaguely knew that the date for Mother's Day was different in the UK from in North America. So, I did a net search and found, "Mothering Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Lent, usually landing it sometime in March ...}
 
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