Good morning. My name is John Van House. I'm the corporate executive chef for
Grand Casinos.
And I'm Kami Schoenfeld. I'm a lamb
producer from western Minnesota,
and we're here today talking about lamb,
the nutritional benefits
and how to make it really nice and good.
I'm going to
butcher this lamb and talk about some
uses about it.
Today we're going to do seared lamb
chops out of the rack of lamb,
and we're going to make a mint
chimichurri with some lime, garlic,
serrano and fresno chilies, a little bit
of olive oil, a little bit different take
on the old classic
green jelly mint jelly and lamb. This is
a nice fresh way to have that same kind
of flavor profile.
This is the rack of lamb, so it would be
from right behind the shoulder to
right to the loin. It's a very popular
cut in lamb. A lot of people will do the whole
rack, and when we take it out of the
package you can see it.
So let's get into it then, shall we? So
why is lamb a good protein choice, Kami?
Lamb is actually a really great protein
choice.
It's high in protein, that's obvious. It's
really good
if you're anemic, it has lots of iron in
it.
It's kind of a fun meat. It's a lot like beef, but a little bit more
gamey.
It's very tender,
so lots of people enjoy lamb. It's kind
of a different option,
but very similar to beef
as a smaller version. I think that lamb
has a very unique flavor. You know, I think that people give
the gamey phrase that you said just
a bad rap,
you know,
proteins like any kind of food source,
it's all about
where they were grown, how they were
raised. You can really
taste how something was raised and where
it came from
when you cook it, and if the animal
wasn't treated right
or wasn't fed right or anything like
that, you can really tell a difference.
So a lot of lamb that you buy some
places is
imported and it's grass-fed. That's maybe
a little bit more where the gaminess
comes from. A lot of American lamb,
not all of it,
but a lot of it is raised more on corn
and protein pellets,
so it tends to be a little bit higher
fat, less
gamey. So the lambs we raise get a
free choice hay, so as much grass as they
want, and then they get fed
corn with a protein pellet, so
we're trying to add that muscle to the
animal. Along with that, they get a
mineral
and a vitamin intermixed with that all,
so that they have a balanced diet. You
know how we balance people's foods,
we balance the diets in our lambs to make
sure that
all their basic requirements are getting
met, and that we're
having them put on muscle and gain
weight,
so that we have a quality product in the
end. Alright,
so I'm just cleaning this up here. This rack is not clean. You can barely see
the bones, you can see them on the
underside
how they're exposed. What we like to do,
though, is clean these up,
and when you clean up the bone so that
it's exposed,
that's known as Frenching, so if
someone's like, "Would you like that
Frenched?," they're asking you if you
want the bone cleaned,
if that makes sense to anybody. So I'm
just going in between each bone and
cleaning out these pieces.
Now these pieces aren't just, you know,
throw away, no good.
I actually like to turn these into like
pieces of lamb
bacon, so I'll take them and just
crisp them up in a pan
and render that fat out and then use it
as a salad topping even.
We sell direct lamb and one of the
favorite things that our producers buy
is lamb brats, so it's lamb
and then sometimes they mix in pork,
maybe a little beef
and flavoring and people really
enjoy that texture
and that flavor of lamb. And a lot of
times, extra trimmings like this go into
making those brats, but it's a very
popular product that we sell when we
sell. Yeah, so in the kitchen we don't like to
waste much of anything,
so if I'm gonna buy a rack of lamb that
is not Frenched,
this is now Frenched, you can see how it's
nice and cleaned up.
What I would do is have a
byproduct use for this
so that, because I pay money for this,
this isn't just garbage, this is money,
this is dollars on the table.
So you want to try to use it the best
you can, and rendering it down and
getting that fat content out of there is
a good way to do that because you can
saute vegetables in it, you can,
you know, flavor rice or potatoes with it,
all that kind of stuff. So at this point
you could cook this rack of lamb just as
is. It would be a whole rack of lamb. One
way that I like to do it is to actually
cook it at a higher temperature like 350
to 500 degrees, somewhere in there,
until it's an internal temperature about
120 degrees. I like my product rare
a little bit, and as I pull it out after
it's on in a hot environment, it'll
continue to cook a little.
But for today we're going to cut these
into chops.
And I like them a little bit thicker
because I can cook them longer and get a
better sear on them.
So we're going to do two bone chops here.
And to do that, we're going to cut right
in between the bones.
I was going to say if you want recipes
americanlamb.com
is the Lamb Board, and they have recently
redone their website and you can
search by cuts of meat, you can search by how
you want to cook it, from
grilling to braising to instant pot
recipes,
and so they've really tried to make
lamb a meat that
people can approach and try different
recipes with. And, they're very simple recipes.
Lamb burgers are a new thing that
they're trying to
sell through the market more, but lots of
ideas.
Anywhere from basic recipes to very
sophisticated recipes,
really short recipes that don't take
much time to recipes
that you know it's an experience of
putting together a great meal.
Very good, so at this point, I'm just
going to throw this away,
because I don't have time to use this
right now, unfortunately.
Kami, would you like to help me out here?
Sure. Go ahead and season these with the
salt and pepper.
Okay. They're just grinders so you pull
them up on top and grind them up.
We'll season one side and I'll flip them
over for you, okay?
We sometimes do something similar to
this at home when we cut them
individually,
and then we grill them, and we call them
lamb pops,
and they're kind of a fun food. I have
young children, and they
kind of like to eat with their hands so
anything that they can grab with their
hands and
eat.
Lamb lollies as we sometimes call
them, too,
same thing.
Thank you, by the way.
Should be fun. We're going to sear more
than just the two sides on it, though,
but we're getting our pan really hot
first because, like I said, with the beef,
we want to make sure the pans are hot
before we add our oil, because right now,
the pan itself is agitating so the
molecules are starting to get excited,
and if you put the oil in too early, it
just sits on top.
Whereas if you put the oil in when the
pan's hot, the pan actually absorbs some
of that oil,
which will help products from sticking.
What kind of oil did you put in here?
This is just canola oil. Does the oil
matter?
Yes, it does actually. That's a
great question.
So, the right oil for the right
job, just like the right tool for the
right job. So in this case, we want an oil
that has a high
smoke point. So that means it
doesn't have a lot of fruit solids or
anything like that in it.
If we were to put butter in here, like
whole butter right now, it would just
burn because the pan's too hot.
You can see we have a little bit of
wisps of smoke coming up, and that's
what we want. We want that high
temperature,
so a vegetable oil, canola oil, grape seed oil
is really good for this, especially
seeing that grapeseed has a high
smoke point, but it has some good health
benefits for you as well.
Things that you want to avoid are like
extra virgin olive oil,
because extra virgin olive oil has a
high amount of fruit solids in it, so it'll burn at high temperatures.
Extra virgin olive oil should be used as
a finishing oil
like in risotto or on top of pasta or in
a salad.
That's when you use it. You don't
introduce it to heat.
Does that make sense? Now there's
different versions of olive oil. There's
extra virgin,
which is from the first pressing of the
olives, so it has the most amount of
fruit content,
but then you have olive oil or virgin
olive oil, right?
That's for the second pressing of the
olives. There's less fruit solids,
but then you have pomace olive oil which
is from the third pressing of the olives,
still tastes kind of like olive oil, but
doesn't have any of the fruit solids in
it in comparison to the previous two,
so it has a much higher smoke point. So
chefs will use pomace olive oil to
saute in
and then extra virgin olive oil to
finish work. Does that make sense?
You can see that it's the oil starting
to pick up some brown here from the -
That's a good sign? We call those
sucs.
So such stick to the pan, the little
brown bits in the pan,
and that's the base word for the word
succulents, if you think about it.
My Latin, right?
So we just gotta take our time. And seeing
as these are misshapen,
because of the bone that's there, we need
to make sure that we're taking the
right amount of time on all sides. We
want to try to get the bone hot,
but we want to develop a good sear on
the meat for flavor purposes,
and obviously some of these have more
meat on them, like this one's a nice big
chop.
That one's going to take longer to cook
than say this guy over here.
So we want to be cautious of that. We
want to pay attention. See how we got
nice browning here, though,
that caramelization, that's what we're
going for,
that color on the meat itself,
and then on the bone that's in contact with
the cooking surface.
That looks really good. Doesn't it?
Nice chops. I love lamb. This would be a
great fun, you know you want to have a cooking
experience, invite a couple friends over -  very simple recipe -
try something new. The key to a lot
of this cooking stuff, too, as you can see
is having your ingredients ready.
If I'm running around looking for this
and looking for that, I don't have the
time to talk to my dinner guest,
right?
This way we can talk about it and sit
here and oogle over 
how pretty the food looks. So lamb
can be found in grocery stores.
Usually bigger chains have it, higher-end
chains have it.
The common things you'll find is lamb
chops, lamb wraps similar to cooking this
style.
You'll find the leg of lamb, which is
the leg. It's usually a bigger piece of
meat. A lot of people
will roast it or it's a slower
kind of like making a roast. A lot of
people eat them for holidays,
so go to the americanlamb.com.
Superior Farm is where this lamb came
from. It's a processor out in Colorado, that's where a lot of the lambs in Minnesota go
that go into the commercial industry. If
you're looking for
lamb directly, we sell lambs directly. We
have more lambs going in this fall.
The other best resource I know of is
there's a Facebook group that was
created,
actually right after the COVID started,
and people wanted to farm
or directly contact farmers. It's called
Minnesota
Farm Direct, and
you go on there and you can find
farmers from Minnesota selling
all kinds of agricultural products.
There's a search you can do so you can
search lamb and you can search by
location in the state. There's about
50,000 members, when I looked at it the other day,
so a great resource for all farm-grown
products in Minnesota.
So that's Minnesota Farm Direct. It's a
Facebook group.
Search lamb and you can find producers
from all across the state.
So if you notice, I'm just searing all
sides trying to make sure that
any of that area that was exposed to
the packaging itself, because that's
where bacteria may harbor itself.
Proteins, unless they've been
tenderized,
are whole muscle, which means bacteria
really can't penetrate the muscle,
so really I'm just trying to make sure
that I sear all the sides
that are in contact with the air, if that
makes sense.
And a couple of these like this one's
going to take quite a bit longer to cook
than these other two or the other three,
but we'll just sear all the sides of
them, and as they finish, as they're done
cooking,
I'll just pull them out of the pan and
set them off to the side on a plate.
Have you ever checked the internal
temperature you or go by look?
So when I was learning how to cook, yes, I
would check the internal temperature
frequently.
But now that I'm much more
experienced, I can do it by texture,
so one trick that I've learned a lot was
to use my hand as a guide
and move my thumb over to the other
fingers.
And as you do that, if you touch this
part of your thumb just by gently,
resting these two fingers together,
that's the temperature of medium rare
beef. So I'll teach you a trick. When
we're raising lamb,
if I feel the ribs, this is a lamb that's
too thin.
If I feel ribs like this where I can't
feel it, it's too fat.
And if I feel it's just right it's just
right.
Oh right on. So, when we teach kids how to
judge livestock,
we use our hands and we can feel how
they are doing on finishing.
Nice, huh?
This is going to make a wonderful brunch
this morning.
Okay, now we're going to move our
other ingredients out of the way here.
What we're going to do is just
take our chops and set them here for our
display
as we're finishing. So what if I was an
inexperienced cook, what temperature
would I want to have these foods?
So if you're looking for rare,
you're looking at about 120 to 125
degrees Fahrenheit. If you're
looking for medium rare, you're looking
for 125 to 130. If you're looking for medium, medium
itself you're looking at 130 to 132,
medium-well is going to be about 135, and
then well done, it's gonna be anything
over 140.
So we're just positioning these to
finish off cooking without burning the
bone.
As I said, the one's going to take a
while. They look beautiful. Well, thank you.
That's just searing it appropriately.
Nice caramelization, beautiful color.
And we're going to take your time on it.
The smell is
intoxicating, isn't it?
So I do like them a little rare,
personally. Do you have a temperature
preference?
I like medium. Well, we'll
make sure that that guy there is medium
for you, okay?
So what are some of the lambs that you
serve in your restaurant?
So we have done lamb in our steakhouse,  and we'll serve it with different
things. One was a chimichurri, which is
why I chose this recipe.
It's just really nice and fresh. Lamb
itself is very rich.
It has a good fat content to it so it
can be very, very rich, so if you pair it
with
rich sauces, it can be overpowering or
it's just too
rich for you. So I like to go with the
fresh, so we're gonna do mint and parsley, lime
juice, chili and garlic
to make a chimichurri sauce, and
that the acid will help to clean the palette
of the fat content from the lamb.
We're actually just going to let this
hang out here,
because they're so big, and let's let
them kind of continue to sit in that pan.
These ones we're going to pull off.
Alright and seeing as this one's so
thick in comparison to the other ones,
we're gonna let them sit there
in the hot pan off the heat while we do
our chimichurri sauce.
Sound good? Beautiful. Alright now, we're
moving over here.
How hot do we like our chimichurri?
Do we like spice in the room?
Alright, so therefore I'll use a whole
serrano chili, seeds
and all, and I'll use a whole fresno chili. Fresno chilis are actually a little bit
less spicy even though they're red.
Traditionally the smaller the chili, the
hotter it is, right?
And then we're actually going to do some
mint. You could find a lot of this at
farmers markets this time of year.
Oh yes, and honestly, with the
food system that the United States has,
you can probably find
most of this yearround. Okay. It all
depends on
what grocery you use and if you do
like going to the farmers market or not.
I love visiting with the farmers,
because I like knowing where my food
comes from.
To see the person in person and know
that they care about what they're doing
is really important, which is why I love
our Minnesota products too, because I get
to interact with you all.
You know so we are just going to use
mint only
in this chimichurri. For those who don't
know, a chimichurri is a
South American staple.
Argentina I believe is where it
originated, and it really is just
a fresh herb sauce that goes with
proteins. You'll see it with fish, you'll
see it with
lamb like we're doing, you'll see it on
grilled beef,
and that's migrated to other areas of
the world too.
Like I know that Cuba is a big user
of chimichurris as
is Colombia, that whole Mediterranean,
but that's because a lot of this stuff
is prevalent in that area,
so we put some parsley in, we put some
mint in, we put a
serrano chili and a fresno chili. Now
we're going to juice some limes in there
as well.
The importance of rolling them to
release that. You notice that. I like to roll my lime
and put some pressure on it to start
making those juices release from the
cells themselves,
and then I just squeeze them right into
the food processor.
You could be doing this when it's
running but you really don't need to.
We will, however, when we're adding our
oil just to make sure that we don't add
too much oil.
Oh boy, that lamb's still just kicking, isn't it? I like that, that smells good.
Do you want to flip him over for me?
So the chimichurri, the fresh herbs and
stuff is one component.
Obviously I'm adding other components
here, and this lime juice acts as an
acid, and like I said before, that acid is
what really breaks down that
extra fat content from the lamb
itself.
It's going to clean your palate really,
really nice.
So we've got a couple wines that
lighten up the lamb.
I mean there's a time for cabernet
sauvignon gravy on your lamb,
you know, usually it's winter. Well, right
now, in Minnesota, it's summer, and we like
to think a little bit lighter.
So I'm going to add some salt and some
pepper to this, and then we're going to
start to actually
turn on the food processor. So give me an
idea, is that a teaspoon, a tablespoon?
That's about a teaspoon, and this will be
about a half of a teaspoon.
You can always add more seasoning. keep
that in mind. Once you add too much you
really can't take it away
so you can always add more, so start on
the light side, and then you can add more
as you move
through the cooking process.
So now that we have this on here, I'm
going to charge this by pulsing it a
little bit.
Now I'm just adding 
some olive oil to kind of bring it all
together.
We don't need too much, but we're going
to add enough to make it so that it's
somewhat moist.
Thank you, Kami. Now that we have
our chimichurri started, it looks
beautiful. Doesn't it? Nice and bright. I like that red,
it gives it a pop.
And it's going to give it a little pop too.
So now that we have our chimichurri -
I used lime juice for this. You can use
vinegars and stuff
too, like red wine vinegar in place of that
lime juice,
but I really like that fresh citrus. It
smells so good, I wish you could smell it.
It's like summer, you know? So now
we're just going to take that fresh
chimichurri, and we're just going to put
some over the top of the lamb.
So we're literally just going to kind of
drizzle some right across the top.
Now as little or as much as you want.
You put too much on here especially
depending on how many chilis you put in
there, you can really affect some of your
guests,
but otherwise, it's fantastic.
Goes great on nachos and stuff too,
you know?
But there it is. So you have seared
lamb chops with a lime chimichurri and
mint chimichurri.
Really easy to make. Lamb's a very
versatile meat
or protein. I has lots of options, and it
can be very simple and it can be very
sophisticated.
So if you're looking for lamb, there's
lots of
people selling direct out there, and if
you're looking for recipes, go to americanlamb.com.
 
