Well, I did need something to accompany my beans, right? Plus, every once in a while I like to experiment around….play with my food if you will. Plus, I've been getting quite a bit of mileage out of my stove top smoker….so why not? When thinking this out, I thought the biggest problem would be getting a nice caramelization on my lamb loin chops….a bunch of pretty inexpensive stuff from Costco….I wasn't going to play around with anything too pricey.
So I decided to do a quick marinade while waiting out my beans.
1 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil – everyday variety, not the good stuff
3/4 Cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 bulb of garlic (yes, bulb)
2 bay leaves
1 tb Turkish oregano
I threw everything into the food processor and let rip. Combined with lamb in a gallon ziploc for two hours. After the allotted time, I poured everything out into a large bowl, removed the chops, scrapping off excess marinade and set in the smoker.
I'll admit, not the prettiest thing in the world….two hours was good as the lemon juice hadn't "cooked" the meat too much. Of course this is hot smoking, I used oak this time around.
While the chops were smoking, I poured the excess marinade into a small pot, added a bit more olive oil, salt, and fresh ground black pepper, heated to a boil, then simmered for a few minutes. I decided to sear my chops after smoking and would use this to baste.
After 20 minutes of smoking, I opened up the smoker, got my trusty cast iron pan onto the big kahuna and some ripping high heat and quickly seared the chops. Actually, these were not bad…….
They had a nice, light smoked, almost cured flavor, light lemon tones, and surprisingly, not very strong garlic flavor.
I gave several of the chops to one of the Missus' coworkers, who is not a big fan of lamb and he really enjoyed it.
Who said that we shouldn't play with our food?
Happy Friday everyone!