Easter Lamb Dinner Recipe

Easter this year will look different for many of us. Sure, not everybody will get together with extended families, especially if elderly people are involved, but still, no pandemic should take away family style Easter dinner. Family dinner doesn’t mean 15 people, but next of kin will still be getting together all around the country, and they should.

Easter might have religious connotations or it can be celebrated simply as the return of spring, and either way this calls for a nice sit down dinner. In a way, this year it’s more important than ever to be together, to enjoy each other and great food, and to reaffirm that things will eventually get better and we will be let out in the wild again after the pandemic.

I have spent a year on Nutrisystem, which helped me lose quite a few pounds, but sit down dinners with family looked a bit different during those months. My husband and kids ate fresh food while I was stuck with microwaved Nutrisystem dinners, and there is nothing wrong with them, but it gets old after a while. This is why I decided to get back to the real world and take all the advice I can from Nutrisystem website and app. Both are full of valuable articles and feature literally thousands of healthy recipes. I have been off the program for a few months now and didn’t gain anything back. This goes to show that you can eat real food as long as you focus on healthy ingredients and watch your portions.

This Easter I will be serving lamb roast with baby potatoes. Potatoes are always in my cupboard (I can’t live without them), but lamb is not always easy to come by. Instacart does a fair share of shopping for me, but even they can’t go to Costco and get this type of meat. It is very expensive in regular grocery stores, so I never buy it there, but I do send Instacart personal shoppers to Publix and Target for many other supplies for my kitchen. I will make sure to visit Costco before Easter again and make this meal one more time.

So let’s take a look at what it takes to make this delicious Easter treat for the whole family:

Ingredients:

• 1-2 racks of lamb ribs
• Fresh rosemary
• 3-4 cloves of minced garlic
• 1/3 cup of olive oil
• Juice from ½ lemon
• Salt and pepper
• Seasoning mix
• Garlic powder
• 2 packages of baby potatoes, halved

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit while you are working on the meat. You can always marinate lamb for a few hours, but with this recipe, you can cook right away.

To prepare the marinade, simply mix olive oil, finely chopped fresh rosemary, minced garlic, and squeezed lemon juice. You can add your favorite seasoning mix or salt into the marinade or season the meat later – either way is fine.

Take lamb out of the package, wash it, and pat it dry with a paper towel. Then make tiny incisions in the meat and fat section. Spread the marinade all over the meat and rub it lightly.

Sprinkle salt or more seasoning on top if needed. Place the meat in the oven on medium rack and set timer for 30 minutes.

This can be debatable though, because some recipes suggest serving lamb ribs almost raw, but that doesn’t really work for me. I go for medium and cook full rack of ribs for 30-40 minutes. This time, after 35 minutes, it was perfect medium and still pink inside. Cook less if you want to go for medium rare.

As soon as you put the meat in, get your potatoes ready. Wash them and cut in halves. Place them in a baking dish, sprinkle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

Stir everything to get potatoes evenly coated and place the dish one rack lower than lamb.

At the end of baking, I had to switch meat and potatoes to make sure potatoes got a bit browned.

Serve this dish right away, while it’s hot. We enjoyed it with homemade sauerkraut, but it can also be good as is or with fresh green salad. Enjoy and stay healthy!