Wine and Honey Lamb

My love of lamb is well documented on this site. I absolutely love lamb.  I’m not exactly sure why.  As a red meat it’s pretty bland and begs for a marinade, which is why I may love it so much as it takes on the flavors of a marinade more than just about any other meat. Normally I will slather it with basil pesto or maybe a red wine, honey mustard, rosemary sauce for a few hours and throw it on the grill, which are both outstanding, but this time I went a little more complex and was quite pleased with the results…

Ingredients:

2 lamb racks, approximately 1.25 pounds each
1 cup dry white wine (not pictured)
1 tbsp minced garlic
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 of a small onion, chopped
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tsp lemon or lime juice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper

I had planned on putting rosemary in with this recipe, but I was out of it and found that it didn’t really need it, but of course I’ll have to test it again soon with the rosemary just to be sure. I also used no salt.  The soy sauce was enough.

I mixed all the ingredients but the meat in a plastic bag and churned them together to get the honey to dissolve, and then added the meat:

Soak in the marinade for a minimum of 2 hours, the longer the better. These soaked overnight.

The next day when I opened the bag, the aroma was intoxicating.  Next time I do this, I’m making a reduction sauce out of the marinade. The smell of the marinade alone made my mouth water.

Here’s the two racks ready to go on the grill:

Don’t bother wiping or washing all that delicious marinade off.

I set up the grill for two zone grilling with coals on the right and nothing on the left.  I put the racks bone side down right over the coals:

After about four minutes I flipped them to give the meat side a good sear:

Don’t be afraid if you get some blackening.  The marinade has honey in it, remember?  The sugars will blacken a lot faster than the meat will burn. Even if it looks like this, it’s still good to go:

Another four minutes and the meat side looks like this:

As I’m going for maximum flavor crust here, I didn’t stop searing there.  What about the bottom?  By using those bones to balance the racks, I can stand them up and get more sear action:

If I wanted to, I could stand them up on their sides as well, to get the ends, but after four minutes on the bottoms, I pulled them to the side with no coals to bake until done and close the lid:

Here’s where I got into a little trouble.  I had way too much ash in the bottom of the grill and I could only get the chamber up to about 200:

Normally, I would bake these at about 275-300 for 10-12 minutes to get a perfect rare-medium rare, but with the temps so low in the chamber, I had to slide them almost on top of the coals and bake for 20 minutes to get an internal temp of 135:

After 20 minutes, I pulled them from the grill and put them inside to rest for five minutes to let the excited juices come to a rest and redistribute throughout the meat before slicing. Here’s a second money shot from the one above just because I love lamb that much:

If you have any questions about the above dish please feel free to comment below or email me.

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