| Roast Leg of Lamb |
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Roast Leg of Lamb is a great dish to make for company. It is
juicy and mouth-watering when done right. Tips: Don't attemp this dish without a meat thermometer. Sides: mashed potatoes and some green vegetable |
| Serves 6 |
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| Ingredients | Directions |
| 5-6 Lb trimmed leg of lamb (ask your butcher to remove the bottom socket joint) | Let the lamb sit at room temperature for 45 minutes to 1 hour. |
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1/4 cup rosemary leaves 5 garlic cloves Zest of 1 lemon 1 Tbsp lemon juice 3 Tbsp olive oil |
Rosemary garlic marinade: Put rosemary, garlic and sliced lemon (or lemon juice and zest) into food processor and process until finely minced. With the food processor running, drizzle the oil through the feed tube, and process another minute. |
| Salt and black pepper | Preheat the oven to 325F. Season the lamb with salt (about 1 Tbsp kosher salt) and pepper and then rub it with the rosemary garlic marinade. With a sharp narrow knife, make 10-12 incisions in the lamb about 1" deep. With your fingers, push some marinade into the incisions to give your lamb more flavor. |
| Oven safe instant read meat thermometer (such as Polder) |
Place the lamb in a shallow roasting pan and cook in the middle of
preheated 325F oven for 30 minutes. Turn the lamb over and insert the oven safe
instant read thermometer into the thickest part of the flesh so that the tip of
thermometer is in the middle and not touching the bone. Roast until the
temperature reaches 110F (around 30 more minutes). Test in different parts of
the roast since different muscles cook at different speed (when the lowest
temperature is 110F, the roast is medium rare). It's okay if the lamb does
not brown. If you want it to have a bit of a crust, put it under the broiler
for 2-3 minutes.
Remove lamb from the roasting pan and let it rest for 15 minutes while deglasing the roasting pan. |
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1/2 cup red wine 1/2 cup water or beef stock |
Deglased pan juices:
Remove scum that might have formed in the roasting pan and discard.
Pour juices into a glass measuring cup. Set roasting pan over moderate
heat, pour in wine and water and stir to deglase the pan by mixing sticky
brown juices with wine. If your roasting pan is not particularly heavy,
keeping it over heat for a long time might warp it. In this case, pour
the deglased liquid into a medium saucepan as soon as the brown pieces are
integrated into the wine. Set the sauce over medium heat and reduce for
5 minutes. Skim the fat off reserved pan juices and add them back into
the sauce.
Carve the lamb against the grain and serve with deglased juices. |