Easter is coming up, Spring is in the air, and I have a nice lamb dinner on my mind. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t like lamb. What to do? I made a leg of lamb a while back, but it’s was a lot of red meat for just me. Lamb chops were the perfect solution, and this recipe for loin chops let me get outside to grill and enjoy the nice weather as an added bonus. And I get to try cooking with 2 new ingredients: lavender and blood oranges. This is going to be fun!
I’m here to share an absolutely delicious and easy to make recipe for lamb chops that looks like you’ve slaved for hours when really it only takes about 20 minutes of cooking and rest time.
The Ingredients
This recipe required some planning because my usual grocery store doesn’t carry fresh lavender or blood oranges. I’m fact, I couldn’t find fresh lavender locally and had to order dried. Amazon came to my rescue with a bag of culinary lavender, and I had a bag on my doorstep in a couple of days. Note: The taste of dried flowers is stronger than fresh, so used 1/3 the quantity of fresh lavender listed in the recipe (1 teaspoon dried instead of 1 tablespoon fresh).
Whole Foods had fresh blood oranges, so I made a special trip just for them. The rest came from my local Publix and was easy to find. The lamb chops were a little pricey for me at just over $13 for 5, but this is a special dinner for me.
The Process
In addition to planning for the special ingredients for this recipe, I also had to plan to marinate the lamb chops. The recipe does say it’s not required, but when does marinating meat not make it better? A quick 7 minutes to measure, chop, and peel, and I had my lamb safely marinating in my refrigerator in a sealed container.
The next day I let it warm to room temperature while I preheated the grill and cut the oranges in half. Then I took everything out to the patio and grilled it up. I didn’t manage to get the grill marks on the lamb, but it and the oranges grilled just beautifully.
Once I was back in my kitchen, I added some spring mix greens to a platter, placed with lamb and oranges on top, and drizzled with olive oil. The presentation was just gorgeous, and the process was so quick and easy!
Here’s the full breakdown of how long each step took:
- 7 minutes to prepare the marinade
- 24 hours to marinate
- 15 minutes to preheat the grill, warm lamb, and cut oranges
- 10 minutes to grill the lamb
- 10 minutes for the lamb to rest and grill the oranges
- 24 hours and 42 minutes total time
