What’s cooking today: The perfect braaied lamb chop

When we were growing up in the wildness of south-western Namibia, then called South West Africa, near the forbidding coastline at the mouth of the Orange River, a Sunday evening braai was the perfect way to end the week now passed before the toil of the new one began next morning. 

The chops were always cutlets of the leg, cut quite thickly. These days, almost everyone seems to prefer loin chops, and I cook them often too, but there’s something about the leg chop that is very satisfying to tear into.

Lamb is frighteningly expensive, of course, but if you have access to the kind of Platteland town that happens to be in sheep country, check the local butcheries for specials, or better still, cultivate a friend whose farmer friend sells direct from the farm. That way, I pay no more than R97 per kilogram for my lamb. But you have to buy a whole one, or at least a shared half. Without the occasional spend on a whole lamb which is cut into portions of my choosing and then frozen until a bit of it is needed, I couldn’t afford lamb at all.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Throwback Thursday: Lamb with mint, two ways

To marinate or not? Entirely up to you. Your lamb chops don’t need to be marinated at all; salt and black pepper will do just fine, and that way you get all of the pure lambiness of its flavour, especially if it’s a quality lamb such as the meatmaster lamb I buy from Cradock farmer Louwrence Lombard. 

But I do like to marinate lamb leg chops. I mix olive oil and lemon juice and stir in chopped rosemary needles, fresh garlic, finely chopped, and salt and black pepper. They can go into this during the morning and you can leave them until braai time, whenever that is, and then cook them on very hot coals. The oil is included to encourage nice crisp cooking once they’re on the coals.

I find that the fullness of the lamb’s flavour is not masked at all, but rather enhanced, by the freshness that the lemon brings and a bit of earthiness from the rosemary.

Make sure you have lots of coals, and more that can be swept or scooped in should they deteriorate too quickly. I keep the grid fairly high above them so that, over the course of about eight minutes, they become perfectly tender and nicely browned and crunchy at the edges.

Jan Braai, who is expert at these things, recommends 8 to 12 minutes for perfect lamb chops. I concur, but tend towards the shorter end of the cooking spectrum. The trick to achieving this is to balance the heat of the coals with the cooking time.

I hope you’re not in the school of braaiers who like to baste their chops in nasty store-bought “steakhouse sauce” (braai/barbecue sauce). If you do that, I promise you that you’re destroying much of the pleasure of the flavour of a simple lamb chop.

(Serve 1 leg chop per portion, with a few more for optional seconds)

Ingredients

Leg chops, 1 or more per serving

Olive oil

Lemon juice

Fresh rosemary

Garlic

Salt

Black pepper

Method

I haven’t given quantities here because there’s really no need to measure everything out. Just mix a dash or two of olive oil with the juice of a lemon, chop up the needles of two or three rosemary sprigs, grab two or three garlic cloves and chop them up too, mix it all together and stir in salt and black pepper to your taste.

Douse the chops in this and put them in the fridge for a few hours. Remove from the fridge an hour or more before braaing them.

Meanwhile, prepare lots of hot coals, clean your braai grid, and crack a beer or two until it’s time to throw the chops on the braai.

Shovel plenty of coals into the centre of the braai spot, place the grid fairly high above it, and grill the chops for 8 to 12 minutes, ideally, but go for a minute or two more if you prefer. Season with salt and pepper along the way (yes, even if there’s salt and pepper in the marinade… you want that nice salty and peppery exterior.)

Let them rest for five minutes or more before serving. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.