Lamb is good in the Hudson Valley, and this recipe is as much about method as it is about what we’re cooking today, which is lamb chops. I sometimes read cookbooks and in the middle of winter, I was regretting that I had no means for an outdoor grilled piece of meat, when I think it was in maybe the Staff Meals cookbook where it suggested one put the cast iron skillet under the broiler for 15 minutes about 4-5 inches from the heating unit. Then add the meat, flip it once, remove it when it is the desired doneness and let rest.
This has been one of our favorite methods to cook chops and steaks because you can cook for 1, 2, 3, 4 people in a relatively short period of time. Yes, you guessed it, this is another of my superfast recipes. I must admit that if you don’t have a good hood over your stove/oven/broiler, well then you’ll smoke up the house a bit. But it is worth it because it tastes great.
So, take chops out of refrigerator an hour or two prior to cooking and wash them, dry them. Pick an herb: rosemary, sage, thyme, mint… all are good with lamb. Chop it up and rub it along with a little olive oil, good amounts of salt and pepper into the chops. Following the instructions above, put the skillet under the broiler about 4″ from heat, turn it on, wait 15 minutes and then add the meat. My chops were about 1-1/2 inches, so I left them cooking for about 4 minutes on one side, flipped it and check it in another 2 minutes. When it was just before desired doneness, I pulled them out, let them rest, prepped the salad and sat down to eat.
Perfect chops every time.