When I was growing up, there was always a sense of excitement and anticipation when my parents cooked a roast lamb. It was served with all the trimmings, including homemade gravy and, invariably, a bottle of supermarket mint sauce. I lived for the gravy, but I always passed on the mint sauce. It was too sweet and syrupy for my liking, and it generally detracted from the lamb that my dad had proudly spent the afternoon preparing.
My relationship with mint sauce changed, however, when I encountered Guillaume Brahimi’s , from Plat du Tour 2020.
Guillaume serves the lamb with a salsa verde, made predominantly of parsley, basil and chives. I wondered if I could do something similar with mint sauce.
I had been experimenting with a recipe for a Greek-style slow-roasted leg of lamb at the time, and I figured an easy, fresh mint sauce would be the perfect accompaniment. So I donned my lab coat and goggles and got to work, taking Guillaume’s salsa verde as my starting point.
After a few hits and misses, I settled on the recipe I present to you below. It’s everything the bottled mint sauce of my childhood was not: a vibrant green with minty freshness and an after-hit of lemony-garlicky goodness. If you’ve taken the time to cook a lamb roast, you owe it to yourself to spend a few minutes throwing this mint sauce together. It's easy as, and it leaves the bottled stuff for dead.
How to make homemade mint sauce
Alll you have to do is pop everything into a blender. Source: Rhys McGowan
Serves 4
Wash the fresh herbs listed below and shake to remove excess water.
In a blender, combine:
- 1 cup parsley leaves
- 1 cup mint leaves
- ⅓ cup oregano leaves
- ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- Pinch of salt
Blitz to form a paste. You’re aiming for small pieces of herb suspended in liquid. If you push it too far, you’ll end up with a green puree. You do not want this.
Use a spatula to transfer the sauce to a small dish for serving. And that’s it.
The finished sauce will tend to separate as it sits, so make sure you stir it before serving.
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Goes great smothered over some slow-roast lamb. Source: Rhys McGowan
