Date Night Lamb Loin | Chef Jean-Pierre

Well, hello there friends. Special dinner tonight. I'm going to show you how to make a lamb loin. Beautifully presented. You're going to love it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video, subscribe to the channel and ring that bell. Stay tuned, we're going to make it together. Well, hello there friends. Let me show you how easy it is to make this recipe. It's not exactly like the kids are hungry, let's make them dinner. It's like a romantic dinner and you want to do something special. And you got to have everything planned. This is not like a really quickie. Okay, so I got a rack of lamb. But we're going to take the loin out of the rack. And I'm going to show you how to do that. Very simple. If you want to do a rack of lamb, friends, there's a video over there on a rack of lamb that I did. I showed you how to do the whole thing. And so when you get a rack of lamb, it's usually, it's usually, I got to be careful. I just turned on the burner here. So here we go. Let me make sure I got it right. Yeah. No, that's the wrong one. Yes. When you get a rack of lamb like that, this is great. If you want to watch a video on a rack of lamb, I'll show you. But we're only going to use the loin. We're going to use the loin, which is right here. You see this part right here. This is why we're paying all that money right here. It's for this. Not for the bones, unless you like to eat bones. So I want to show you how to take it off. Very simple, friends. This is where you use your hand. Don't be using your knife here. A lot of people use knife too early. But if you watch the rack of lamb video, you'll see I'm doing it. So what we do, we push, you see, look, look, friends. We push the loin away from the fat cap. We call that a fat cap. Okay. We take it right there. And what we're going to do, very simply, we're going to push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push. And then we're going to remove. Be careful. Make sure your hands are not fatty. See, look, look, fatty hands, fatty hands make them slippery. And if you got slippery hands when you're using a knife, it's not so good idea. Right. So we're going to you take your knife. Remember, there's a bone right there. Right. There's the bone right there. So what we're going to do, we're going to take out. This is important to have a nice slicer, some kind of a slicer. You need it. Right. And then you put it in there and you put it on the bone, on the bone, on the bone. You're on the bone and you scrape the bone. You scrape the bone very simply. See, scrape the bone. And now you get yourself a beautiful loin. And right there. So now a lot of people use this to make a stock. If you're going to do a lamb loin, great idea. Then you have a you use the bone if you want to make a stock. I use that. Not right now, but I use that. I make a stock only when you use lamb. That's the thing. You can't use a lamb bone to make anything but a lamb stock. Otherwise, everything you do tastes like a lamb. So what do we got here? We got a silver skin and we got the fat and we will remove that. So look, the fat, you first scrape the knife on top of it. OK, you first you scrape the knife on top and you remove the fat. That's easy to do. The silver skin is a little different, but but not that difficult. OK, pay attention, friends. It is very simple. And that silver skin, you get on the beef tenderloin, you get on the pork tenderloin, you get a lamb tenderloin. You want to grab it first. And then what you do, you take your knife. You want to make sure the cameras are able to see this and you see what I'm flipping. I hope I'm putting my my hand so so Jack can capture this. See, I'm right there and I'm doing it like this. You see, look. And what happens when you scrape that silver skin, you don't put any meat, you don't remove any meat on the other side. The secret is to slightly tilt your knife and go against it. You see, very simple. So go go in and keep doing what I'm doing right here. See right here. See right here. Now we're going to do it again. Now I'm going to show you in the lamb. We've got an extra little tenderloin right here. You see right here on top of the loin, which is toward the end of it. It's a little skinnier. And there's a little loin right here. I like I don't remove it. What I do do is I remove the extra fat on top. A lot of people say that it's extra flavor. You know, that's really a matter of opinion, not my opinion. My opinion is the fat on the outside of the lamb doesn't do much for flavor. First of all, it's going to all melt in the sauce. It's going to melt in the in the cooking process. So I'm not too worried about it. You want to keep it on? You keep it on, friends. It's really up to you. I find that then we make a much better, much cleaner tenderloin if we remove most of it. Again, matter of opinion. Do whatever you want to do with it. OK, so look, it's clean. See that loin is right there. We kept it because there's fat in here and there's a nice piece of meat right there on top. So I don't want to remove it. You know, this thing is expensive. Oh, you guys bought meat. Of course you bought meat lately. It's very expensive. So what do we do now? Well, first of all, we clean ourselves. We got a dirty knife. We got a dirty cutting board and we don't like that. So we're going to clean it because I have always my sanitized water right here. You see, I always keep my sanitized water. I got a very, very small amount of soap and bleach in here. You can't even smell it, but it's enough to sanitize my wall. OK, so we're going to clean this up enough to sanitize all my tools. Now, what do we do with the lamb? Let's make sure our pan is hot and we're going to pan sear it. We're going to use clarified butter. Let's make a little hotter heat. How do we prepare? Very simple. We put some crushed black pepper and I'm going to make a blueberry, sage and Madeira sauce. Very simple. I'm going to serve it, you'll see, with a sweet and regular mashed potatoes and some sautéed spinach. So this is the only preparation you got to do. You can do all this in advance of your dinner party. You really can do prepare what I'm doing right now. You can do all this in advance. You can even pan sear it in advance. Nothing's going to happen to it. You can pan sear, get a beautiful golden brown. And when you're ready for dinner, all you got to do is pop it in the oven. Now, this thing is not going to take very long, but we'll have to keep an eye on it to make sure we don't overcook it. How much do you cook it? That's really, again, a matter of opinion. Some people like it rare. I don't really like lamb rare. I don't mind beef very rare, but I don't like lamb rare. I like my lamb medium. Again, a matter of opinion. Is it right? Is it wrong? Whatever you like is what's wrong. What's right? Whatever you like is what's right, friend. So I want it to be really, really hot before I put it, and I'm going to go with clarified butter. Why am I using clarified butter? I got a little pepper in there, but that's OK. Why am I using clarified butter? Because we all know, for those of you that have been in my channel for a while, I certainly do know that clarified butter burns at a very low smoke point and we don't want that. We're going to put some in the sauce of regular butter, but not clarified. So here we go. Right here, we got that temperature. We're going to go in there and we're going to give it a beautiful Maillard reaction. We're going to get some beautiful caramelization. And so when you put it in the pan, when you put it in the pan, don't touch it. Just leave it alone. Leave it alone. You see? And we're going to get that beautiful caramelization and then we're just going to pop it in the oven and we're going to cook it like that. The oven is preheated at 450 degrees. We're going to start the sauce, friends, while it's all happening. And in the sauce, we're using regular butter. Why am I using regular butter and not clarified butter? Because I'm going to keep an eye on it and I'm not going to let it burn. This, I don't have much of a choice. This is going to burn no matter what I do if I put regular butter in here. So you see, look right there, the butter, you can see it. You can see right here, the milk protein is starting to caramelize. Boom. Put some cold in there. And the cold is shallots. How cool is that? Very simple, right? Nothing is complicated. Remember, in cooking, nothing is really complicated, friends. Shallots, you don't have shallots, you use onion. See, look, we got a nice little color right there, friends. Probably can't see it yet, but you see, look, you got beautiful caramelization. That's called a Maillard reaction, caramelization of protein. We really want to do this, OK? So this, guys, is not going to be in there very long, but depends how you like to cook. Again, remember, we work with thermometers. We work with thermometers, friends. We have thermometers. Some people say, not professional. Don't worry about what they say. You use a thermometer, friends. You want your meat to be cooked rare, 120, 125. You want it to be medium, 130, 135, and so on and so on. Nothing wrong with it. You want it well done, you cook it well done. You cook however you like it. Don't worry about what people say. Oh, you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to do what makes you happy. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Somebody doesn't like it, you know, they can go eat somewhere else. That's what I tell them. So we got a golden brown. The sauce is doing good. You see? Very simple. Very simple recipe, friends. We got a fresh sage. What else could you put in here? Tarragon. You know I love tarragon. But I was in the mood for sage, and I think lamb and sage were meant to be friends. They really were, right? So we're going to put that, and also we're going to put some dry blueberries. Look at that. They're really cool. Dry blueberries. Why dry? Because the wet ones are going to give too much water. And you know what I think of water. I don't really like water too much. So look what we got here. We're looking good. You see? We're looking really good. I really want to, before I go in there, give it a beautiful color. And now, my friends, we're going to take them. You can see it. Beautiful Maillard reaction right there. We're going to take this guy. We're going to turn this off. We're going to change back. We're going to go in the oven, preheated oven, 450 degrees. We'll keep an eye on it and see how long it's going to take. And then we'll decide how to do it. Okay. So, so far so good, right? I'm doing anything you guys can do, right? I'm going to serve this with two potatoes, a sweet potato and a regular mashed potatoes. And I have a recipe for the regular mashed potatoes. I have that over there. And the sweet potatoes, I haven't made a video on it because it's so simple a child could do it. I take sweet potatoes and I put them, I boil them like I do a regular potatoes, right? And I put them in a food processor. Salt, pepper, maybe a little flavoring in it if you want. A little spice in it of some kind, nutmeg, whatever it is you want to put in here. And you process and they smooth as silk. They're so easy to make. They're really, really easy to make, friends. A little sage, right, so far. Oh, hey, you can smell the blueberry. Amazing amount of flavor coming from the blueberry. We're going to put our Madeira. So you don't want to put Madeira, put port. You don't want to put port, put your red wine, put a favorite red wine. Except if you do put regular red wine, you will have to reduce it. And reduce it means you reduce it by half. When you're putting a port, a Madeira or a Marsala, those are fortified wine. They don't need to be reduced. Okay, so it's very simple to remember. Port, Madeira, Marsala do not get reduced. All the other wine get reduced by half. A little bit of garlic. Remember, we don't burn garlic. And very little, see, very little. You can put more if you want, but I want the garlic as a kiss in the background. I don't want it to be in the foreground. And then we got some blueberry jam. Blueberry jam. Dried blueberry, blueberry jam. I got to tell you a funny story. I'm waiting for it to cook, so I can tell you something. Because I got plenty of time. I was doing the Today Show years ago. I used to do the Today Show on a regular basis. And it's a long time ago, though, because Matt Lau was one of the hosts. I don't know what happened to him, but he's not there no more. And Katie Couric, so it's a long time ago, right? So, oh, oh, beet stock, friends. Look how beautiful my beet stock is. I gave you the recipe for that. Okay, we're going to put beet stock in here, and we're going to let that reduce. So I got to tell you a funny story, right? So it was one of the first times I was doing the Today Show. I was in a green room, and they had those beautiful blueberry muffins. And, boy, do I love blueberry muffins. And those things were amazing, right? So, you know, you get to the Today Show. Sometimes you got to wait an hour and a half in a green room. And I'm eating muffins. I'm eating muffins. I said, hello, son. I'm eating muffins. And the person, the segment assistant, whatever, producer, whatever they are, they go, okay, you're going to be ready in a few minutes. And she looks at me. She says, what happened to your teeth? I said, what? What happened to my teeth? She said, they're black. My hands, my hands, my fingernails, my mouth, everything was blue. But not just blue. It was like dark blue, and it looked like it was black, right? So she said, go wash your hands. So I'm washing. I'm washing my hands. I'm washing. Don't come out. It's not coming out. That blueberry is there. My hands, my mouth looked like, oh, my God. And my hand looked like a mechanic for six years didn't even wash his hand. That's how bad it looks. So I said, oh, how am I going to do it? She said, it's got to come out. You got to figure out a way to come out. I said, the only way it's going to come out is bleach. And with a little bleach, I had to gargle. I had to gargle a little water with a little bit of bleach, very little, and put my hand in there, and I took it right out. So it was very difficult to get rid of the bleach flavor. I was drinking, and I'm washing my mouth, and washing my mouth, and washing my mouth. I don't know how many times I had still that bleach within there. So as I was doing the segment, I'm testing, and I go, oh, it's delicious. In the meantime, it's got the bleach flavor behind it. So lucky I didn't die. Anyway, that's the story for today, friends. So, hey, look. Look at the sauce, friends. We're looking very good. We're going to let this cook for a while. You know what we should do? We should check on the lamb together, friends. Let's check on the lamb together. Let's see how it's doing, okay? Probably doesn't. Now, remember now, you take something out of the oven, friends. Oh, yes, looking beautiful, but it's very rare. We can still see it's extremely rare. So I tell you what we're going to do, friends. We got to let this cook for a little while. I got to let this guy cook for a little while. And it's beautiful, you see? Look, it's gorgeous, isn't it? But it's very, very rare. You can feel it right there. It's probably, I would guess to say right now, still about 100. And so we're going to let it cook. I'm going to tell you later on on the video how long exactly it took. We're going to wait for this to cook. We're going to wait for this to cook a little bit longer. I'm going to reduce the heat, and then we'll finish the sauce together. And I'm going to play it. I'm going to play it with the potatoes and the spinach. I'm going to show you the whole thing, okay? So I'm going to go back in the oven and cook this, and I'll be back in a few minutes. Okay, friends, it's been about 13 minutes. Remember now, that's going to be depending on the size of your loin, friends. Depending on the size of your loin, okay? It could take 10, 12, 15 minutes. Depends how it is, and depends how you like it cooked, okay? This is going to be about medium. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take it out of there. I'm going to let it rest right here, okay? Now, what do we do with this here, right here? Well, you know, the clarified butter, at this point, not that great anymore, okay? You can use it if you want, but I don't really care to use it. But you know what? The madera, the fond in the bottom of the pan, are going to be delicious. All that fond right there, all that goodies. And since madera is a wine that doesn't need to be reduced, guess where it's going, friends. We don't lose nothing. And then guess what? That pan is easy to clean now, you see? All right? Now, remember, always keep a rag on it. Always keep a towel on it. Get a new one, okay? Very important. All right? So now, now what do we do? We got the beautiful sauce. We got the lamb resting. We can relax for a while because we got to let it rest for at least 10 minutes. We're going to finish the sauce. We're going to sauté some spinach real quick. And the sauce, we're going to make it look really pretty, friends. Okay? Now, at this point, you see the sauce is still a little liquid, right? You see a little liquid? And you can reduce it. But if you reduce it, you lose a lot of volume. And you really don't get to the exact consistency you want because otherwise you have no sauce left. But you can. If you want to do that, you can reduce it to the right consistency. What I like to do, friends, is I like to put a touch of cornstarch or arrowroot or tapioca powder. Very little. You don't need a lot. Just like nothing. Look. That's it. Ooh, that's it. You see? That's it. Keep an eye on it because this could be too much. Now, you don't have to strain that sauce if you don't want to. See the beautiful thing is we're relaxed now. The lamb is resting. By the way, you can do that with pork tenderloin. Same recipe. Do it with the pork tenderloin. Not as expensive as the lamb. The lamb, you buy a rack of lamb. Make sure you buy a big one, by the way. You want to buy a big rack of lamb. It's got to be close to two pounds or over two pounds. It's even better if you can get it. Okay? Over two pounds, much better. You see? Look, look, look. Look how beautiful that looks. All right. So now here's what we're going to do, friends. You don't have to strain it if you don't want to. But you know I'm going to. I'm going to strain it. And how do I strain it? Right there. Look. Very simple. Let me take a spatula. Let me get everything out of that saucepan. And you see, look, by the time I'm done, there will be nothing left in that pan, folks. No, no, no. I don't leave nothing. You see right there? Right? And we're going to take our ladle, and we're going to smoosh everything. Smoosh. That's a new culinary term we're learning today. What did you learn today at Washington Chef Jean-Pierre? Smooshing. Smooshing food. And we don't take ourselves too seriously, okay? This is just cooking. Look, look, look, look. What do you do with this? Compost. Nothing. Put it in your, I don't know, scrambled eggs. Okay, I can do that. That wouldn't be that bad for a scrambled egg. Make sure your tools are clean. And look, look, look. You see what I'm talking about now? Look at this, friends. All right, now you can cook this and reduce it a little bit. Not much, no. Get rid of this. It's ugly. And you know at the end what we're going to do, friends? We're going to put butter. Yes. Okay, we're going to saute a little spinach. The spinach. You know, olive oil. I'm using my garlic olive oil. Just going to saute some spinach with a little shallots and a little garlic. That's it. Nothing. Nothing complicated, friends. You know, we don't always have to be complicated, okay? Now, like I said earlier, friends, remember, I said that at the beginning, this is not Wednesday afternoon, the kids are hungry, we're going to make dinner. This is a romantic dinner. This is something special you got to do, right? And now we have a lot of friends of mine that are in the restaurant business. This is an item easy to do in a restaurant. Very easy to do. A little salt, a little pepper in there on the spinach. And I could have used the coarse pepper in here. Let me taste that sauce, friends. How am I doing in seasoning here? Let's see. I'm not doing very good because I have no seasoning in there, okay? Light, light, light, though. Light, light. It's a very small amount, okay? What do I do with my whisk? Here it is. Small amount. We don't need a lot. The spinach, something fell on the floor. Hey, come back over here. We're almost done, friends. Very simple, right? Put a little cut shallots in there, and then we're going to put the whole thing together. And don't worry about the lamb getting cold. I promise you it's not getting cold. You got to let it rest, otherwise you'll lose all that juice, okay? And I don't know about you, but I don't want to lose any juice. So we're looking good right here. The spinach, we don't want it to cook too much, just a little bit. That's all I want. Just a little cooking right there. We're done. Let me put a little coarse black pepper in here. All right. The sauce. We will put butter at the last minute. I'm going to put the potatoes. Butter. Don't be afraid. Don't be shy, friends. Turn this off. We're done. Put the butter at the last minute. Remember when you put the butter, friends, when you put the butter in there, you want to mix it up right away. Right away. Don't let it separate. Okay? And this looks beautiful. Now, this is a sauce that you can rub all over your body. When it is not so hot, please. I love my life. Let me tell you, this is amazing stuff. All right. Look, we're done. Heat is off. Everything is off. Let's do the plate. So we got a plate. We got a ring. Cookie cutter. No big deal, right? Cookie cutter. Everything I do is easy, right? Cookie cutter. What about the potatoes? Potatoes are coming. A little hot. But not too hot. Not too hot that I can't touch it. I got sweet potatoes and regular potato. Put them in a pastry bag. You don't have that luxury? You don't have pastry bag? Put it in the ice cream scoop. Put it in there. Pastry bag is easier for me. As a professional chef, sometimes I do things that are not exactly what you would do at home. But no big deal, right? You can do that. And you make your mashed potato in advance. You can keep it warm like I do in a warm oven. This is hot. But my hands can't handle the heat. Or you can put them in a microwave oven for a second. And nothing is going to happen to it, right? So now, you take your mashed potatoes. This is very hot. And you put them in the bottom. It's hot, right? And then you take a little cutter to make sure it's nice and smooth. You see? You make sure this is nice and smooth. So what it is, it makes a... It's hot. You make a nice presentation worthy of a great place for dinner. And it really is not that big of a deal to make at home. You see, at the end of the day, look, we chefs, we don't do things that you guys cannot do at home. Okay? It's really not complicated. All right? So here we go. Now we're going to take that, and we're going to put it on top. But not too much. Just a little bit. Boom. And that's it. Okay? We do the same thing right there. I probably put just a touch too much. I like to normally keep it just slightly underneath the mold. Okay, folks? But I put a little too much. I have a tendency of doing this. Put too much stuff. I want to make it bigger than it needs to be. It doesn't need to be so big, you see? Put a little bit underneath, if you can, your cookie cutter. So it makes it easy for you to do what I'm doing right now, see? Not that it's really important that it be smooth. But you'll see what I'm going to do in a second. Now we're going to take a lamb that has been kind enough to reduce. And we're going to take a slicer. You see? So this juice right there is not juice meat. This is the clarified butter. Okay? So what we're going to do, we're going to remove all this, because it's in the way of the camera. Okay? So this is clarified butter. You can use that for the sauce. There'd be nothing wrong with it. Okay? But we're going to put it in here. If I did that then, if I didn't put it on the plate like that, I'd have it all over my cutting board. All right? So at this point, friends, you cut your loin. And it depends how you like it cooked. So I wanted to show you. See right here? This is where we have that tenderloin that I was talking to you about earlier. I don't know if you can see it right here. That's that loin right there that we kept. You see? So a lot of flavor in there. A lot of flavor right there. You see? Oh, at the end, when you get toward the end, you don't have it anymore, that loin right there. You see? So this is a two-serving. Beautiful two-serving, friends. Really easy two-serving. It's cooked to perfection for me. Some people may think it's too rare, too raw, whatever it is. But that's their liking. It's however they like it. You see? And we go in and we put this on here like this, with or without the tenderloin attached. You see? And it's not complicated, right? A child could do this. Well, a little bit educated child. And you know what I forgot? I forgot the spinach. What is wrong with me? You know, some days I wonder what I'm thinking of. I like to put the spinach here and then put this on top. Put the lamb on top. I get into the moment and I forget. So you'll have to forgive me. I forget things. Now we've got to make sure this is perfect now. All right? And it is. Okay, so now let me go back. I hope I can go back to my beginning. Taking them in the same order. Yep. We're doing good, my friend. You see? Right there. Voila, voila, voila, voila. Voila, voila, voila. And we have ourself a, and if we would have kept a little piece of spinach, we could have put it right there in the middle. But since we did not, we're going to put a little piece of sage. But we'll have to do it after because I have to go in there and cut it. And all we have to do at this point, friends, is cut. Let's take this right there. You see? All of a sudden we have a plate that looks pretty cool, right? Nice dinner. And then we'll take that sauce. Where's that sauce? Come over here. And that sauce, friends, what I would like to do, don't go anywhere, friends. I got to go get a tool. I hope nobody went anywhere. I have to go get a gooseneck. It makes it easier for me to put the sauce without making a mess because that ladle is not exactly the easy tool to pour on it. And all we're going to do here, make sure it's in the middle. I can't move it if it's not in the middle. And we're just going to put sauce right there, my friends, just like this. You can put a lot more sauce or a little less sauce. It's really up to you. Don't try and do this. And voila, my friends. We have ourselves an amazing dinner. A little gourmet dinner for you at home. Not that difficult to do. I know you can do it. But we could decorate it with a little sage since sage is a flavor. I'll probably do that for the thumbnail. But this is it. Let me check the lamb, friends. I got it right here. Let me just check to make sure it's cooked to my liking. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to dip it in the sauce. Oh. Mmm. The sweetness of the berries and the wine. Mmm. It's amazing. My friends, I hope you try it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video. Subscribe to the channel and ring that bell. Thanks for watching. We'll see you the next couple of days with another fantastic video. Thanks for watching.