Imagine it, your mom calls you to dinner. You smell melted butter, maybe some vegetables, potatoes and, best of all, lamb chops. Not just any lamb chops, but breaded lamb chops fried in butter. Yummy.
A few decades ago, meat like chicken was considered a delicacy and very expensive. Dinner and lunch usually consisted of lamb or fish. A leg of lamb was often eaten on Sundays as a Sunday roast. But the chicken was something you got very rarely.
In many cases, this has turned around. Chicken in Iceland is one of the cheapest meat, but lamb is getting more expensive. However, it is possible to get lamb chops for not too much money.
Lamb chops are cut-down racks of lamb and, thus, pretty good meat. Icelanders generally eat them breaded and fried, with steamed vegetables, boiled potatoes, and melted butter. When Icelanders think about family dinners and what they got growing up, lamb chops are probably on the list of dinners they miss from “Hotel Mom.”
It’s easy to do, tastes delicious, and can recreate wherever you are in the world. Of course, many Icelanders will tell you that no other lamb tastes as good as the free-range Icelandic ones, but that’s just preference.
If you don’t feel like making them yourself, you can buy them pre-breaded and ready to fry in the frozen section of Icelandic supermarkets.
Ingredients (for four people):
- 12-16 lamb chops
- 1 ½ dl flour
- 1 dl milk
- 2 eggs
- 3-4 dl breadcrumbs
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
- 100 g butter
Method:
- Tap the chops lightly with a buff hammer.
- Roll the cutlets in flour.
- Whisk together milk and eggs, and roll the chops in the egg mixture and the breadcrumbs.
- Heat the butter in a pan and fry the cutlets at high heat for 3-4 minutes on each side or until they become golden brown.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Put the cutlets in a hot oven at 180 °C for 12-15 min.
- Serve with the remaining butter in the pan and, for example, fried potatoes and mixed vegetables.
