The Wellness Blog

Roast Lamb Loin with English Herbs

Lamb loin is one of the most delicious and treasured cuts of lamb. Cooked to medium rare, or to a pink color, it can be so tender and absolutely delicious. Yet many people think they do not like lamb.

If you want great lamb, it is important that the meat come from a breed used for eating, rather than wool. Sheep with wool often have a very strong and gamy flavor to their meat.

The lamb should be grassfed, as lamb tastes very much like what the animal was fed.

The roast must also be cut properly, with the natural bone and fat.

The rack of lamb split loin roast sold by U.S. Wellness Meats fits all these requirements perfectly. It comes from Katahdin sheep, a meat breed which is not used for wool. It is grassfed only.

And it is cut perfectly for roasting. The meat is in one piece, surrounded by the natural bone and a thin layer of the natural fat. Unlike supermarket lamb loins, the bones are not cut through. While cutting through the bones makes it easy to cut the meat into chops after roasting, it results in the loss of natural juices and flavor The uncut bones provide incredible flavor and juiciness to the meat, which is flavored by the bones and the fat. This also makes the meat more tender. The bones and fat are the two best spices you could have for this meat. The bones also make a perfect roasting rack.

In this recipe, I have added some English herbs that enhance the already wonderful flavor. There was a famous song that contained the words "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme..." Few people realize that these herbs form a traditional English flavor combination, one that is fantastic with lamb.

Serves 2 to 4.

INGREDIENTS

1 U.S. Wellness Meats rack of lamb split loin roast

1 teaspoon organic fresh parsley, finely chopped

1 teaspoon organic fresh sage leaves, finely chopped

1 teaspoon organic fresh rosemary leaves, finely chopped

1 teaspoon organic fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped

1 teaspoon coarse unrefined sea salt, crushed

2 tablespoons U.S. Wellness Meats extra virgin olive oil, early or mid-season

DIRECTIONS

1. About an hour before you plan to cook the roast, combine all the other ingredients in a small bowl and mix well. Place the roast on a plate, and rub the mixture all over the meat, fat, and bones. Let rest at room temperature for about an hour.
2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
3. Place the lamb bone side down in small roasting pan. Place the pan in the oven, and roast for 25 to 30 minutes, until done to your taste. 25 minutes should give you a medium rare roast. Using a sharp, sturdy knife, cut between the meat and the bones, which will give you a cylinder of delicious boneless meat. Cut the meat into serving pieces. Enjoy the wonderful flavor!

Stanley Fishman is a cookbook author and blogger who is an expert on cooking grassfed meat. Stanley uses traditional flavor combinations and cooking methods to make the cooking of grassfed meat easy, delicious, and tender. Stanley has written two cookbooks that make it easy to cook grassfed meat —Tender Grassfed Meat: Traditional Ways to Cook Healthy Meat and Tender Grassfed Barbecue: Traditional, Primal and Paleo. Stanley blogs about real food and the cooking of grassfed meat at his blog Tendergrassfedmeat.com.

US Wellness Lamb

We get a lot of questions about our lamb, so we thought we would create a special blog post highlighting our lamb producers, offerings, and recipes. We’re happy to report that our lamb is also a Missouri product. Raised just south of US Wellness headquarters near Perry, MO our lambs are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. They enjoy lush Missouri pastures and plenty of rainfall. We harvest a mix of hair sheep and a special old world breed of wool sheep noted for their meat quality. 

We have a variety of grass-fed lamb products available through our online store. We’re thrilled to announce the newest addition to the lamb category - the Lamb Tenderlioin. This cut is second to none in tenderness. Its exquisite taste will have you hooked after just one bite.

What other lamb selections do we offer? We have some real rarities! Think organ meats (Lamb Liver, Kidney, Heart, etc.) and Marrow Bones. We also offer a variety of chops and roasts. Lamb Loin and Rib Chops are a griller's delight. Just fire up the grill and thow on some chops. Our assorted Lamb Sweetbreads are a rare delicacy and we are pleased to be able to carry them. Sweetbreads are highly sought-after by chefs, adventurous home cooks and connoisseurs for their mild, sweet flavor.  Easy to prepare and very versatile, these offal meats can be sautéed, poached, grilled, fried, braised or roasted.  Demand exceeds our supply for this specialty selection, so we encourage you to order them when they are available. Another specialty selection is Lamb Tallow.  This can be used as an alternative for shortening, lard, or beef tallow. Add it to meat and vegetable dishes for added flavor with all the health benefits grass-fed fat offers. Unfortunately, we do not get tallow with every harvest, so we encourage you to order when it's available. To view all of our lamb selections, please visit our online store.

We have a variety of lamb recipes available on our Pinterest page, but we wanted to share a few of our favorites. Here are some tried and true recipes:

- The Domestic Man: Lamb’s Feet Soup and Rolled Lamb Loin Roast

- The Urban Poser: Lamb Lollipops

- Slim Palate: Lamb Curry

- Balanced Bites: Greek-Style Lamb Meatballs

- The Clothes Make the Girl: Moroccan Lamb Kabobs

We welcome your feedback! If you have any lamb recipes or cooking ideas, we'd love to hear them. Feel free to post below or link to any favorite recipes you want to share.

Photo of the Day: Missouri Lamb

Enjoying lush spring grass near Boonville, MO.

Celebrating 11 Years!

When US Wellness Meats was founded back in 2000, we were raising and selling our grass-fed beef products only.  After a few short years in business we realized we needed to widen our horizons as there are so many other great products we could be offering!  So we started to branch out into grass-fed dairy and lamb products, and things continued to grow from there.  We would not be the company we are today without the other amazing farmers and producers who contribute to our business.    

We get customer questions weekly about the different sources of our products and where they are raised, so we decided an in-depth blog post would be a great way to address all of these questions at once!   

We’ll start at the beginning…  


Beef: Our beef is raised in the heart of the Midwest.  Most of our current production comes from three of the founding members of the company located in Northeast Missouri and West Central Illinois.  We enjoy long summers with abundant rainfall to keep our pastures green most of the year.  We bale plenty of those warm weather grasses in the summer so the cattle enjoy those same grasses when snow is on the ground.   
 
We also source hard to come by cuts (such as hangar steaks, flanks, etc) from a farm run by personal friends of ours in picturesque Tasmania.  This island is the ideal place for grazing animals as they have a temperate climate that allows for grazing year round, and no hormones or GMOs are even allowed on the island.  Both our Midwest and Tasmania cattle are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished.  

Lamb: Our lamb is also a Missouri product.  Raised just south of US Wellness headquarters near Perry, MO our lambs are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished.  They enjoy lush Missouri pastures and plenty of rainfall.   

Bison: Our bison are roaming around the open pastures of the Dakotas and Northern Plains and our farmers there are dedicated to improving the native grasses of the area, and ensuring the natural way of life bison have been accustomed to for decades.  Our bison products are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished.   

Pork: All of our pork products are GAP-certified, meaning they are raised in the best conditions possible.  Our pork comes from Heritage Acres which is a group of small, local Missouri farmers providing the finest quality, antibiotic-free pork.   
 
Poultry: We actually have two different poultry farms raising animals for US Wellness Meats.  Oaklyn Plantation in Darlington, South Carolina raises all of our free range 20-lb chicken bundles and ships those direct from the farm.  Due to growing interest and frequent customer requests, Oakland Plantation also started raising soy-free chickens in the summer of 2011.     

Our second producer is in Oklahoma, and they raise free range birds for our smaller chicken packages.  All of their birds are raised under sunny Oklahoma skies on a non-GMO feed ration, in addition to the grass, sticks and bugs they enjoy on a daily basis.
 
Rabbit: Gourmet rabbit is one of the best kept secrets here at US Wellness Meats.  Our rabbit comes from a small farm in Michigan.   

Seafood: Our seafood products come from Vital Choice, one of the premier wild-caught seafood providers in the country.  Their products are certified sustainable, and most products are caught off the west coast and surrounding waters.  The only exception is our wild-caught raw shrimp which comes from a different company fishing off the coast of Mexico.
 
Dairy:  We are very lucky to be able to source grass-fed dairy products, without any added growth hormones.  Our Pure Irish Kerrygold Butter is grass-fed from Irish cattle.  We have two different Amish dairies- one in Indiana, the other in Pennsylvania, who supply us with raw, grass-fed cheese as well as four different varieties of goat cheese.   
 
Olive Oil: One of the newest additions to our store is Extra Virgin Olive Oil, produced by Chaffin Family Orchards in Oroville, CA.  Most of their trees are over 100 years old and all the olives are hand-picked.  They use the animals on their farm to help with trimming and pruning – check out the goats on weed control!  
 
We have carefully collaborated with like-minded farmers and individuals that hold their products to the same standards we believe in for our company. Long story short, we have built our business over the past eleven years while respecting our animals and our environment. We enjoy the products, just like our customers, so it remains our goal to offer the best selection possible.  

Featured Farmer Dinner

The US Wellness crew had an amazing meal on February 27 at Thyme Square Cafe's Feature Farmer Dinner, where US Wellness was the “featured farmer”. Thyme Square Café is located just across the river in scenic Quincy, IL and is one of our best wholesale customers.

The five course meal featured our Beef Brisket, Whole Chicken, Rabbit Striploin and Lamb Chops, in an effort to showcase the wide array of meat cuts we offer. Chef Cory Shupe and his staff did a remarkable job preparing every course and explaining to the sold-out restaurant exactly how everything had been prepared.

The mouth-watering menu is below, along with some photos and comments.

Thank you again to Chef Cory Shupe and his staff for a delicious dinner and a wonderful evening!

Appetizer: Amuse Bouche

Bite-size morsel to tease & wet the palette…

This was our Beef Brisket – corned and served with cabbage on a small biscuit. Don’t let its size fool you – it was small but the flavor was incredible!

1st course: Chicken galantine, grilled ciabatta, tart cherry mustard & marinated olives

Our Whole Chicken, including homemade broth, organs, etc…very, very healthy! This dish contains the chicken broth, which is a superfood itself, but also all the organs: liver, kidney, etc and all the health benefits they provide. The grilled ciabatta was an excellent side dish and we loved the tart cherry mustard!

2nd course: Braised rabbit risotto with wild mushrooms & Italian parsley

Rabbit striploin served over rice with creamy mushroom sauce and chunks of wild mushrooms topped with parsley. This was a hands down US Wellness favorite! For many of us it was the first time trying rabbit, and we were more than pleasantly surprised! The rabbit striploin was very tender and lightly seasoned to give it a clean, crisp flavor.

3rd course: Lamb chops with roasted potatoes, rosemary, carmelized onions and grilled lemon

Lamb rib chops – amazing. Our lamb comes from the Katadin and Dorper breeds, which are hairsheep, meaning they do not produce wool. This leads to a fresh, clean flavor. The 6 oz lamb chops were amazingly tender with an outstanding flavor - we could have all eaten twice as much!

4th course: Coffee cream profiteroles topped with toasted pistachios; served with spiced hot chocolate

Some of the best hot chocolate we have ever had! It actually contained cayenne pepper, which we would have never guessed. It was completely addicting and we could have drank a gallon of it!

We went home full and happy! We had a great evening and met many new friends who had plenty of questions to ask about grass-fed meats.

(Jim, Jen, Tressa, Amanda, John)

Please leave us your comments – we love to hear from our readers and customers!

Lamb with Pistachio Parsley Crust

Tender Grass-Fed Lamb with Pistachio Parsley Crust

    * 4-pound grass-fed lamb shoulder, visible fat removed
    * Sea salt, to taste
    * Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
    * 1 large onion, sliced into rounds
    * 1 cup dry-roasted lightly salted pistachios
    * 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
    * 1 tablespoon lemon juice
    * 1/2 cup whole wheat panko crumbs
    * 3-5 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
    * 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

   1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
   2. Season lamb with salt and pepper. Place onion rings on the bottom of a cast-iron skillet or roasting pan. Place lamb shoulder on top of onions.
   3. Place pistachios, extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, panko crumbs, garlic and parsley in a food processor. Process until all ingredients are well blended.
   4. Pat pistachio-parsley crumbs all over the lamb. Place lamb in oven in 400 degree oven and roast for 20 minutes.
   5. Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees. Cook lamb an additional 10 minutes per pound or until medium-rare (lamb tastes best medium rare; be careful not to overcook it.) Remove lamb from the oven and let rest 15 minutes before cutting. Slice meat against the grain and serve.

For more information about Ivy and other great recipes, please visit her website!