Breast of Lamb, the Easy Way

Lucky has bone-in breast of lamb on sale this week. It’s a fairly inexpensive cut to begin with, so it was a real bargain, and most lamb is just a bit out of range for not-so-young newlyweds with only one wage earner. (We’ve applied for Stefan’s work permit, but for now, the government forbids him to earn money.)

Anyway, the last time I cooked a breast of lamb, I’d bought the boneless version and stuffed it with something—ground veal, I think. This time around, I had those bones to contend with, and I really didn’t want to engage in the fuss of playing butcher, though I do possess a boning knife. I figured that if I made use of my handy pressure cooker, I wouldn’t have to worry about bones.

I was right, but I couldn’t actually locate any recipes for breast of lamb that involved the pressure cooker. In fact, most of the recipes I could find really made preparing it out to be entirely too much work. So I pretty much made it up as I went along, and it worked splendidly, so I’m sharing it here.

Breast of lamb, straight from the pressure cooker. The bones are already falling out.

Breast of lamb, ready for serving after a light crisping under the grill.

Start-to-finish time

About 90 minutes

Time actually spent cooking

About 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 1.5-2 lbs bone-in breast of lamb
• 1 Tb olive oil
• 1/2 clove elephant garlic or 2 cloves ordinary garlic, peeled and chopped
• 2 Tb balsamic vinegar
• pinch rosemary
• pinch sage
• salt and pepper

Tools

• Heavy skillet
• Pressure cooker

Heat the 1 Tb olive oil in the heavy skillet over a high flame and brown the meat on all sides along with about half the garlic. (Breast of lamb is a very fatty cut, so you won’t need more than 1 Tb oil and could probably make do with less.) Transfer meat and garlic to pressure cooker.

Add remaining ingredients and approximately 4 cups water to pressure cooker. Seal and bring to pressure. Reduce heat until you are just maintaining pressure and cook for 45 minutes. (If you have an old-fashioned pressure cooker, the weight on the top should rock gently. Otherwise you risk boiling off all the water and burning the lamb and the pot. [If you’re an experienced user of pressure cookers, you can talk to me about grandmothers and sucking eggs now.])

Turn off heat and run pressure cooker under cold water to release pressure. Transfer lamb from pressure cooker to a heatproof dish. Carefully remove the bones. By now the meat should be so tender that the bones slide out easily—what you need to be careful about is burning yourself. (Latex exam gloves are good for this.)

If you want to crisp the lamb up, you can pop it under the broiler for about 5 minutes after you’ve removed the bones. If you’re the gravy-making type, you can pour the fat out of the pressure cooker (there will be a lot of it) and make up some gravy while the lamb is crisping. Otherwise just serve it up with your choice of side dishes.

Makes 3-4 four-ounce servings.