Linda's first lamb BBQ

One of the strangest things for me moving to Oregon from Ireland was that there was no lamb to be found in the supermarkets, I mean literally no lamb at all. Back in Ireland it might be expensive at times but lamb chops and lamb roast are a common sight in every butchers. So I found myself really missing the taste of lamb as I've never really been a huge beef eater apart from the odd steak during the summer or a beef stew during the winter. Then one fateful day last summer +Linda Dean with the help of Google discovered a local farmer who was actually willing to sell us lamb at an affordable price. We had struck gold and a week later we cycled out to the farm to collect our lamb. It was Linda's first taste of a lamb roast and she was blown away by the flavour, lamb really is an incredibly tasty meat and even mutton is fantastic if cooked correctly.

So this year while at the local farmers market here in Corvallis, Linda once again came across a farmer that was willing to sell us Lamb at a reasonable price. So we bought an entire lamb to freeze and keep for the months ahead (better value to buy in bulk if you can) and tonight we had our first lamb chop BBQ. 

Our still newish grill was put to good use tonight and not for the last time this summer cooking some great lamb for us.

If you look very closely at Linda in the above picture you can actually see her drooling at the thought of eating the lamb.

Lamb is much more pink I think than beef and takes a bit longer to cook, it is normally very tender and the taste is completely different to beef.

They sizzle nicely with a drop of olive oil and their own juices. The smells of lamb cooking on the BBQ are delightful and will have you drooling just like Linda in anticipation of the coming meal.

They definitely cook a lot slower than beef steak so you have to watch that but they don't burn like beef either as lamb is a very juicy meat.

Lamb is very, very succulent, tender and incredibly flavoursome, we didn't have any tonight but mint sauce can be great with lamb and we really should make some as we have a ton of mint growing in the garden (we've been using them for Mint Juleps).

Next I think we'll try a nice Lamb roast or possibly rack of lamb with mint sauce made with fresh mint picked in the garden.

And that's about it for now, so the lesson here is, if you haven't tried lamb you seriously need to...unless you're a no meat person in which case you need to try some fresh garden mint in a Mint Julep.