Braised Lamb with Radishes & Mint - Basque-Inspired Braised Lamb Shoulder

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with braised lamb with radishes and mint that's right this might look like a fairly standard platter of meat and potatoes but in reality this basque inspired braised lamb dish was one of the most interesting unique and delicious things I've made in a long time and those glistening beauties that look like fingerling potatoes are actually radishes so while the ingredient list might appear to be a little bit bizarre do not let that throw you off this was really amazing so let's go ahead and get started with our lamb and the cover using here is called lamb shoulder chops and yes those are some big ones those are about 12 ounces each so a little lamb might be fine for Mary but not for this recipe we really want to use some nice big thick meaty chops here and of course we're going to have to season these up so we're going to make a little bit of a spice blend here starting with some kosher salt in two which will make some nice Spanish paprika as well as some freshly ground black pepper we'll also do a little cayenne for a little bit of heat plus we haven't used any in the last couple videos and people are getting a little twitchy and then we'll give that a mix and we will generously season both sides of this lamb and by the way I'm basing this on an appetizer I had at a basque restaurant recently and they actually use lamb belly for this which was beautiful but since we are doing a main course I decided to go with the shoulder jobs which are still nice and fatty and flavorful but just a lot Meteor and once we have those seasoned we'll head over to the stove where we're going to brown these over high heat in a little bit of olive oil very thoroughly on both sides and of course we could just stand at the stove watching those Brown wasting valuable time but I have a better idea while our lamb is browning let's go ahead and prep our radishes so don't always think you have to prep everything before you start a recipe if there's a step that's going to take seven or eight minutes like the Browning use that time to get one of the other ingredients ready that is just good time management and by prepping the radishes all we mean is scrub them very well because we're not peeling oh so make sure they're nice and clean and then we will trim the tops off but I do like to leave a little bit for appearances and then sometimes there's a little bit of a dark band right around the top that looks like dirt it's not dirt but it looks like dirt so sometimes I'll go around to give that a little scraping if necessary and then other than trimming off that little tap root our radishes are prepped in case you're wondering these are called breakfast radishes so I'm not sure how this will work with the regular red radishes breakfast radishes are fairly easy to find so our radishes are prepped and we'll head back over to the stove because by now our lamb should be browned so what we'll do is we'll turn our heat to low we will remove the lamb and reserve it at which point we're going to add the three ingredients that form the base of this sauce and those would be sherry vinegar sugar and anchovies all right let me give you a moment to compose yourself while I repeat that the base of the sauce is sherry vinegar white sugar and anchovies and long story short what we're making here is basically homemade msg and while I admit it does seem like a little bit of a strange combination it works unbelievably well here and we'll take a spoon and we'll mix that all together and once it gets to about this stage we'll turn our heat to medium-low and cook this stirring until it reduces down to basically what looks like a syrup or syrup as I believe it's pronounced in English and what we're looking for is something that resembles this all right so it's reduced down to a fairly thick and sticky substance whoo check it out I bet people think those spoon marks in the pan look like something but anyway once this glutamate sensation has been created we will go ahead and pour in some chicken broth or stock and we'll stir that in and that's going to basically deglaze our glaze and at that point we can raise our heat to high because we want to bring this up to a simmer before adding our lamb back in and what we're waiting for that we can add the last couple ingredients we're going to do a little bit of freshly and finely chopped rosemary as well as a little touch of cinnamon which is going to give this a great little subtle sweet background note and speaking of sweetness I decided to not do any sauteed onions in this and I don't have time right now but I will explain that thought process on the blog post so we'll stir that in and once our mixture is simmering we'll go ahead and add our lamb back in along with of course any accumulated juices and then before we cover this and pop it in the oven we're going to have to place in our radishes so just go ahead and distribute those between your chops wherever you see an open space and then once our radishes have been successfully introduced we're going to cover this and roast it nice and slowly until tender so let's put that in a 275 degree oven for approximately three hours and what we want to do about half way through is pull it out and turn our pieces of lamb over and I should mention like most braise dishes this does not look good until it looks good okay so don't be concerned with any temporary ugliness so we'll give those a flip cover it back up and pop it back in until basically the meat is tender which like I said should take about three hours give or take and this is what mine look like at that point okay we don't want to be falling apart but as you can see that connective tissue between the muscles has broken down and what we'll do is we'll turn this over one more time before finishing this uncovered and one clue you're ready to proceed with this last step is that those shoulder bones will be very easy to pull out of the meat and we can remove those if we want if they stay in I leave them in because I like the presentation but anyway we will flip those over and then to finish we're going to crank our oven up to 425 and pop these back in uncovered for about 15 to 20 minutes or until nicely browned and look in something like this and I'm sure it will be but you definitely want to check to make sure your meat is fork tender at this point if it's not cooking more you are the boss of your Basque inspired braises so you make the call but mine was perfectly tender at that point we will remove our lamb and radishes to a serving platter and keep that warm while we finish our sauce and what we mean by finish the sauce is simply reduce it over high heat until it thickens slightly and while that happens as usual you have the recommended optional step of skimming any pools of fat from the top which I like to do but anyway like I said we're going to reduce this on high heat and when it starts to thicken up and it looks like it's getting close I will reduce the heat to low so I have a little bit of control this situation and right here you can see what I think is the optimum viscosity and at that point what we'll do is we'll turn off the heat and add the last two ingredients some freshly sliced mint leaves or as we would call it in culinary school a chiffonade of mint and then last but not least a cold chunk of butter and as you know once that goes in we got to keep everything moving so that fat emulsifies into the sauce so keep that pad moving you can shake it you can stir it it doesn't matter any kind of agitation will do and as soon as that butters disappeared and we've tasted four final seasoning we will go ahead and spoon that over our lamin radishes and that was one sexy sauce look at that glistening at us so gorgeous and shiny and then we'll go ahead and finish with the obligatory sprig of mint and that bask inspired braised lamb with radishes is done and we will get to the meat in a minute but I have to start by tasting one of these radishes which are just amazing they're earthy they're sweet they're aromatic just absolutely delicious and to think all these years I've been eating radishes raw like an idiot so I really do think you're going to enjoy those very much and as far as the lamb goes it's really hard to describe just how good this was I mean as you would expect from a brazing technique the meat is very succulent very moist it just melts in your mouth and the taste thinks all those naturally-occurring glutamates is what we call in the business a flavor bomb just incredibly savory and while it does take a few hours to cook it is very easy to make extremely tasty and absolutely gorgeous I mean come on look at that I was going to say bask in its glory but I'm not a big fan of puns they are considered the lowest form of humor so I will simply finish by saying I really do hope you give this a try head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 227,181

Rating: 4.9537444 out of 5

Keywords: Lamb And Mutton (Food), Braising (Culinary Technique), Food (TV Genre), Basque, radishes, chef, john, foodwishes, recipe, recipes, cooking, Kitchen

Id: Iku7cnIplEg

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Tremule]

Chef John rarely fails to deliver.