Cooking Mama | Food

Easy and Healthy Grilled Lamb with Yogurt Sauce Recipe

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The aroma and flavor of grilled lamb and yogurt sauce have always been appetizing for me. Here I am sharing with you a grilled lamb with yogurt sauce recipe that’s so easy to make and so good! Pair it with white wine, preferably Chardonnay, and you have the perfect date night at home.

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~ Date night at home during this pandemic. It’s just so hard and worrisome to go out nowadays. So hubby and I indulged in some grilled lamb paired with Chardonnay at home. Here’s wishing you the best of what our current life can offer. Cheers! ~

Searching for Lamb Recipes

We have a series of cookbooks at home about dishes from around the world. I got them from barter and the girls were just so happy.

They enjoyed reading about the different descriptions of food from different regions as well as the distinct flavors. Using little sticky notes, they have marked all the recipes that they would like me to cook.

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~ Great Recipes of the World is a set of recipe books that I got from barter. But aside from the recipes, it’s the stories about different cuisines that made this set really worth it. Glad I bit for these because the children learned a lot from them. ~

And two of the recipes they marked are lamb dishes. One is a Moroccan dish while the other is a Greek dish. I am more inclined to make the Greek recipe because I had Greek yogurt in the refrigerator. It was mistakenly bought but now, it will be put to good use because a friend gave us lamb meat.

Grilled Lamb with Yogurt Sauce Recipe

Before we start, I just want to say that this lamb recipe is better using lamb chops. Or any part that you can slice and cook evenly.

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~ This is the thawed lamb that I used for this recipe. ~

Nevertheless, we got the flavor and texture that we are after in lamb and we were just happy to use the leg of lamb for this. You can replicate this recipe using other cuts of lamb, but preferably the lamb chops.

Ingredients for the Grilled Lamb

  • 1 kilo lamb meat
  • 1 Tbsp. salt + 1 Tbsp. brown sugar
  • Fresh mint, chopped
  • Fresh oregano, chopped
  • 2 Tbsps. extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 Tbsps. fresh lemon juice (I used calamansi juice)
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 head garlic, chopped
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~ The marinade ingredients for the leg of lamb. So aromatic! I wonder if this will also work well with pork and beef? Hmmm… ~

Yogurt Sauce

  • 200 grams containers Greek-style yogurt*
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • Fresh mint, chopped
  • Fresh tarragon, chopped**
  • 1 small onion, minced
  • 1 head garlic, minced
  • Salt
  • Freshly ground pepper
  • 2 Tbsps. cream cheese spread, optional
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~ My yogurt sauce ingredients. It’s good if you can make your own yogurt. If not, the Pascual Greek-style yogurt worked well. This is also awesome as a salad dressing! ~

*Note: I used 2 containers of Pascual Greek-Style yogurt. It’s 100 grams per container.

**Most Greek recipes use fresh dill. Since I don’t have in on hand, I searched for a replace.

Fresh tarragon is a good replacement for fresh dill.

Procedure:

1. Wash and pat dry your lamb with a paper towel.

2. Mix all the ingredients for the marinade and rub the mixture all over the lamb. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

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~ If you are using a whole piece like this, it is best to slice the meaty parts to let the flavors of the marinade seep in. ~

3. Prepare the yogurt sauce by mixing all the ingredients. You can make this without the cream cheese spread, but for a fuller flavor, that cream cheese would make it perfect. Just don’t use too much, unless you want it “cheesy”.

You can make the sauce even the night before. Just refrigerate after mixing. Letting it stay for several hours will allow the fresh ingredients to meld with the yogurt.

4. When you are near dinner time, pre-heat your grill pan to about medium high. I used a stove-top grill and still worked okay.

5. If the grill is hot enough, arrange the lamb all around. I didn’t remove the chopped garlic and onions. The charring brought a lot of smoky aroma to the grilled lamb.

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~ I used a stove top grill. It’s so much easier than a charcoal grill. ~

6. Depending on the thickness of the meat, grill the lamb about 4-5 minutes on each side and you will get a medium well grilled lamb.

7. Serve hot on a bed of curly greens and spoon the yogurt sauce on top.

Cooking Tip

If you want the oils from the yogurt and the cream cheese to come out, coat the grilled with yogurt sauce. Pop the lamb inside the oven and bake for another 5-8 minutes on 180C.

Yogurt Sauce on Salad Greens

What I have discovered is that the yogurt sauce itself tastes awesome with salad green. More that the medium grilled lamb that my husband enjoyed, I had a field time eating the curly greens smothered in yogurt sauce.

The garlicky taste as well as the herbs and lemon juice made the yogurt so appetizing. Plus, the cream cheese tamed everything and gathered the taste for an exciting burst in the mouth.

I will experiment with more yogurt combinations next time for other possible salad dressings.

Cooking with Donated Ingredients

We are very concerned with going out because of the threat of Covid-19. The ingredients I used in this lamb dish were mostly given.

Firstly, the leg of lamb was a gift from a friend from the media who is growing sheep in his backyard. The curly greens were bought my mother in law while the yogurt was a wrong purchase.

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~ A beautiful slice of lamb. ~

But serendipitously, these all came together so I think it was meant for us to enjoy lamb again.

We haven’t gone out to eat in a restaurant since March. It is better to be safe than sorry with the Covid-19 still hanging around our heads.

So family meals are now spent at home and the kids were very happy with this grilled lamb. They were not very enthusiastic about the garlicky sauce though, just the goodness of grilled lamb. I am a happy and fulfilled homecook!

Health Benefits of Lamb Meat

Lamb is a kind of red meat that comes from young sheep and is very rich. (Source)

Here are the nutrients that can be found in lamb meat.

  • High-quality protein
  • Vitamin B12
  • Minerals like potassium, iron, zinc, magnesium, selenium
  • Omega-3 fatty acids

The protein in the lamb is supposed to promote muscle growth and performance when consumed regularly. Moreover, it helps prevent anemia.

This is actually a good kind of meat for growing kids like our daughters.

Cholesterol in Lamb

While it is a good kind of protein, lamb is also high in cholesterol. So if you are watching your cholesterol levels, you can have lamb, but do it occasionally and in moderation.

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~ Wine and dine at home. Lamb is a very rich and good quality kind of meat. But eat it sparingly, unless you are a growing kid. ~

It is also best to choose the not-so-fatty cuts and prepare it in a healthy way, like baking or grilling it with olive oil. Avoid adding dairy, like what I did above.  

Other Recipes

Meanwhile, here are other recipes that you might be interested in to try cooking at home.

Asian Recipes

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