Cumin Roast Lamb (烤羊排)
Some absurdly tender lamb ribs, seasoned with a classic Northwest spice mix
So I wanted to show you how to make an awesome dish from the Northwest of China, roast lamb ribs.
I’m not sure if these guys have made it across the Pacific or not yet – it seems that usually Northwestern-style Chinese food abroad seems to be confined to noodle joints. For the unaware, these ribs ostensibly do what they say on the tin – lamb, roasted, covered in a cumin-heavy Northwest-style rub.
But what really makes the dish, to me at least, is their texture. “Fall off the bone” is a cliché that I tend to try to avoid, but… yeah. These are fall off the bone. But what makes them so interesting to me is how they get there – coming from the West, we’d probably assume there’s some sort of slow roasting situation going on. Nah. At their core, these ribs are poached or braised… then blasted in an oven at a high temp. Basically, the same idea as a reverse sear.
It’s a cool approach, and makes for some lamb ribs that’re easy to love.
Ingredients
Full lamb ribs, 3, sliced in half -or- lamb spareribs, 6. So right, the ribs that we get here in China are like the full thing, and not really trimmed of any excess fat. So if you’re either based in China or have a solid butcher… get them to do that. Three ribs, sliced down the middle so you get three chops and three spareribs. Of course, I know that you can’t exactly stumble into a Wholefoods and get a whole lamb rib… it seems that you’re generally stuck with either (A) spareribs or (B) a frenched rack of chops. In that case, I’d personally go with spareribs… I’m just really worried that the Western-style lamb chops would be too lean here. Either way, fresh is better but frozen is totally ok.
For the soaking liquid: 1.5L of hot, boiled water; ½ tbsp Sichuan peppercorn (花椒); ~2 inches crushed ginger (姜) -or- enough water to submerge the ribs together with a solid glug (~2tbsp) of Shaoxing wine. Ok, so we’ll get into the whole soaking process later, but the idea is to remove some of that slight ‘off’ odor that lamb can sometimes be guilty of. The classic way Chinese cooking handles that is with some Liaojiu/Shaoxing wine, but a solid chunk of the Chinese Northwest is Muslim – so wine’s obviously a no-go. So let’s just keep this Halal and use Ginger-Sichuan Peppercorn water… i.e. water steeped with those ingredients. Serves much the same function as Shaoxing wine… balances those odors.
For the poaching liquid: ½ tbsp Sichuan peppercorns (花椒), ~4 dried chilis, thoroughly deseeded (干辣椒), ~2 inches smashed ginger, 1 Dacong/Daepa/Welsh Onion (大葱) -or- ~3 sprigs of scallion (葱). All of these aromatics are basically optional, but it’s nice to simmer the lamb with them. For that Dacong – that’s the Chinese aromatic that’s usually (mis)translated as ‘leek’. If it’s easy for you to buy, great; if not, really don’t worry about it. Use a few scallions and tie them in a knot, or just skip it.
For the rub: 5 tsp cumin seeds (孜然), 2.5 tsp toasted sesame seeds (炒芝麻), 1 tsp fennel seed (小茴香), 1 tsp chili powder (辣椒面), 1 tsp salt, ½ tsp MSG (味精). Both the cumin seeds and sesame seeds are ‘half ground’ – i.e. cumin blitzed in a coffee or spice grinder for ~10 seconds… sesame seeds slightly pounded in a mortar just to get out a bit of their oil. Fennel seed’s finely ground, ditto with the MSG.
Oil, preferably sunflower oil (葵花籽油) and/or rendered lamb fat, 2-3 tbsp. To be messaged into the lamb before marinating with the rub.
For dipping: 1.5 tsp chili flakes (辣椒粉), ½ tsp chili powder (辣椒面), ½ tsp salt, optional 1/8 tsp Sichuan peppercorn powder (花椒粉), optional sprinkle MSG (味精). For this, by a sprinkle I mean really a sprinkle… like, ~10 crystals or so, pounded into a powder.
Process
Ok, so high level overview here: soak, poach, dry, rub with oil and the spice rub, marinate, blast at high temp.
Now, know that with that second bit – the poaching – there’s a few different directions you can go. I won’t bore you too much with it here… check out the note below for more info there.
If using, make the Ginger-Sichuan Peppercorn water. Add that hot, boiled water to the smashed ginger and Sichuan peppercorns and let it steep. Uncovered with that amount, it’ll probably need ~1 hour to get back to room temperature. If you’re pressed for time, after the ten minute mark you could get away with tossing some ice packs in to cool it down.
Add the ribs to the water and soak for one hour. After the hour mark, you’ll notice that this’ll really start to draw out the myoglobin from the meat – the lamb’ll look much paler in color. This soaking process helps remove the ‘shanwei’ or ‘lamby odor’ from the meat. And while your “ BS old wives’ tale” sensors might be flaring up and flashing… I promise that to my taste buds at least, it feels like it’s doing something. What’s that something? Not sure. From my hours of googling and trying to parse papers that I have no background to properly contextualize… I have a hypothesis, but I’m not going to share it because this is exactly how pseudo-science can spread. If you happen to have a background in organic chemistry/food science though, definitely drop a line so I can run what I’m thinking by you.
Remove, and slice off any excess fat. I mean, lamb ribs should be fatty. Don’t be paranoid here – it’s just that for the lamb we get here in China, sometimes there’s like a slab of pure fat that’s just like dangling off the ribs. Lamb spare ribs should be almost as fatty as pork belly. Save that excess lamb fat if you got it though, we’ll be rendering it out later on.
Poach the lamb: add the lamb and the other poaching ingredients in a pot with cool water. Cover, and over medium high flame bring up to a boil. Once it’s at a heavy simmer, start to skim out any gunk, and let it continue to simmer for 5 minutes. Then cover, shut off the heat, and let it sit there for ~90 minutes. Ok right, so this is one possible method you can use here. The logic is that we’re never actually getting the liquid all that hot – we’re getting it up to about ~90C, then slowly dropping it down through poaching temperature to room temp. Steph says that the lack of quick temperature change makes the meat juicer, but unfortunately I can’t find anything to support that claim – so I think more than anything, we’re really more poaching than braising here. Again, there’s a few ways to crack this nut – for a few more ideas, check out the note below.
Once the liquid’s cooled down (~40C is ok)… remove, pat with a paper towel and dry for 30-90 minutes. If this’s still wet when we toss it in the oven, it can inhibit browning. I’m a bit paranoid on that front, so I keep it out drying on a rack for ~90 minutes.
Optional: dice the excess lamb fat, then render it by frying together with ~1 tbsp of of sunflower oil over medium-low heat. Render out however much oil you like – I usually go a full ~15 minutes because the leftover lamb cracklins are like my dog’s all-time favorite food. Or if you have a particularly fatty cut of lamb, feel free to start the process in water just as if you were rendering lard. If you’ve got extra fat… melted lamb fat is a great thing to drizzle over cous cous.
Toast the sesame seeds. Nice thing to have around. In a dry wok/skillet, over medium low heat toast the sesame seeds for ~3-5 minutes, or until they begin to brown slightly. Make a big batch. When it comes to stuff hanging around your pantry, toasted sesame seeds > untoasted sesame seeds.
Make the spice rub: in a coffee or spice grinder, grind the fennel seed into a fine powder; grind the cumin seed for ~10 seconds. Thoroughly crush the MSG in a mortar, lightly crush the sesame seeds to release a bit of oil. Mix together. For the ‘half ground’ cumin seeds you’re looking for something like this, and for the sesame seeds you’re looks for something about this consistency.
Massage the oil into the now-dry lamb ribs, followed by the seasoining. Get your hands dirty… do a bang up job getting every inch. Marinate for at least 30 minutes and up to over night. Preferably marinate overnight. Seems to work well.
Preheat oven to 220C. Roast for 15 minutes, turning halfway through. Serve with seasoned chili flakes. Why 220C? Mostly because it’s the max our crappy little halogen oven can do… so that’s what we tested. Check out the note below on ‘roasting alternatives’.
Note on poaching alternatives:
So a big help in nailing down this recipe was our local beef/lamb butcher, who’s from Gansu (Chinese sources are even frustratingly touch and go for this dish)
For him, he does a straight simmer for ~60-90 minutes. Like, get the water hot, turn down the flame, toss it in and simmer. That method’s good too, and would probably be the more authentic way to go about the dish. That said… when we tried that in our tests, the lean part of the chop got that whole dry-yet-soft quality that you sometimes find if you simmer meats without much fat/collagen for a long time (e.g. the lean pork used to flavor Cantonese soups). The ribs were perfect though. So If you wanted to do that, I’d probably drop the chops in with ~20 minutes to go or so to make sure they don’t overcook.
The thing was, I really wanted to mimic the roast lamb ribs that we get at the very best Xinjiang restaurant in the city. The cold water start method was much, much closer to the super soft texture that they’ve got going on at that restaurant there, so that’s what we went with.
Another pretty famous lamb restaurant in Shenzhen uses a pressure cooker for their stuff, I’m 97% sure. I remember a post on Baidu Zhidao (the Chinese equivalent of Quora) where cook from a restaurant that did roast lamb said they did 10-15 minutes in a pressure cooker? Can’t seem to find the post right now. If using a pressure cooker, try 10 minutes at first.
Alternatively… sous vide might be another decent choice… especially if you’re working from lamb chops. I personally don’t own a sous vide, but I think I’d go for ~65C (medium well), then finish the lamb roasting.
Note on roasting alternatives:
Take a look at this picture here. This is the way that this is usually roasted – over charcoal… albeit up a distance, slowly rotating the lamb.
Ultimately, using a Western-style oven for this dish is mimicking that process – albeit, IMHO mimicking it pretty well. But feel free to finish this dish at your own discretion! If you want to finish with the grill, that might honestly be better. I’d probably play around with a two-zone heat set-up… cook it on the low side for a bit (~10 minutes) and finish on the hot side.
For the Western sort of ovens though? If I could test this at a shorter time/higher temperature, I would. Playing around with this at a lower temperature then finishing under the broiler could be a decent idea too. Basically, what I’m saying is that 220C for 15 minutes works - do that first – but please, feel free to get creative to perfect this recipe.