A crown roast of lamb is a very visual choice of meat and will produce lots of tender and succulent cutlets. A crown is two or three single racks of lamb, tied together with string to form a circular crown. The racks of lamb will have been French trimmed, meaning that the bone is scraped clean of meat and fat, prior to tying it into a crown. A crown can be assembled yourself at home, otherwise you can ask your butcher to do it for you.
Make sure to always remove your meat from the fridge, at least 1hr prior to cooking, to allow it to come up to room temperature. This makes sure that the muscle fibres relax, resulting in a tender piece of meat post cooking.
Follow our fail-safe recipe below to produce a flavoursome centre-piece. Use a meat thermometer for most accurate cooking times (54-56C for pink), or follow the timings below. Cooking Notes: plus resting
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Yields:
8 serving(s)
Prep Time:
10 mins
Cook Time:
35 mins
Total Time:
45 mins
Cal/Serv:
230
Ingredients
16-bone crown roast of lamb, about 800 g (1lb 12oz), at room temperature
25ml
(1fl oz) olive oil
5
thyme sprigs, leaves removed
20g
(¾oz) flat-leafed parsley
1g
large garlic clove, roughly chopped
1Tbsp.
Dijon mustard
Directions
Step 1
Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fan) mark 6. Put lamb crown ring on a baking tray. Put remaining ingredients and plenty of salt and pepper into a blender (or pestle and mortar) and whiz (or bash together) until well combined.
Step 2
Rub herb mixture over lamb, then roast for 30-35min for pink meat (roast for longer if you like meat more cooked). Take tray out of oven and transfer lamb to a board. Cover with a few layers of foil; leave to rest for 20-30min.
Step 3
To serve, slice crown into 16 cutlets (cutting between bones).
Get ahead
Rub herb mixture over lamb up to 3hr ahead. Chill. To serve, take lamb out of fridge 40min before roasting, then complete recipe.
An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).
