beth

Obvi­ously I’m on a roast for a sim­ple but absolutely won­der­ful din­ner kick.  But seri­ously a Bone­less Leg of Lamb Roast is an unbe­liev­ably easy meal to make.  The first time I made lamb was a few East­ers back, it was for the Holy Sat­ur­day din­ner.  I’m not sure why I got it in my mind that I had to make it, since we didn’t have it grow­ing up as a tra­di­tional meal but some­how I was stuck on it.  So, I bought a pre­sea­soned sec­tion of leg of lamb from our local mar­ket. I was not will­ing to tempt fate by mak­ing it on my own that first year.  I was actu­ally ter­ri­fied that I’d ruin even the pre­sea­soned lamb.   I didn’t ruin it, instead it was pretty good but I won­dered after that could I make it myself & have be even bet­ter.  After a few tries I got it. Which if you knew me is funny because when I was a kid I refused to eat lamb.  I remem­ber going to Greek­town in Down­town Detroit with my par­ents, my Mom got lamb.  I freaked out because I couldn’t believe peo­ple ate lamb.  Mind you I ate cow, pig and var­i­ous birds.  So who was I to judge?  As I got older I got over myself, tried lamb and loved it.  I know I am a hor­ri­ble and sick meat eater.   Stranger still my once veg­e­tar­ian (for 6 years) Hubby also loves it.  It’s just like that say­ing “Once you go lamb you never go back” or some­thing like that.

Here What You Need:

Bone­less Leg of Lamb (ours is just under 5 lbs)

1 Whole Yel­low Onion

5 Medium Carrots

5 Whole Rus­set Pota­toes (medium)

1/2 Cup of Red Wine

2 Springs of Fresh Rosemary

2 Springs of Fresh Thyme

6–7 Cloves of Garlic

The Juice from 1 Whole Medium Fresh Lemon (about 1/4 Cup)

1/4 Tea­spoon Salt

1/4 Tea­spoon Pepper

1 Table­spoon Olive Oil

Here’s How you Put it Together

Our leg of lamb is pre-trimmed with some fat on but not an exces­sive amount, if your leg of lamb has too much fat trim off some of it but leave a nice layer.  Keep­ing some fat is impor­tant because it pro­vides fla­vor to the meat and ren­ders down when cooking.

Then do a rough chop of your Rose­mary, Thyme and Gar­lic (make sure you remove the outer layer of cov­er­ing from the gar­lic).  After you do the rough chop trans­fer this mix­ture (which smells divine) into a small bowl, in that small bowl squeeze the fresh lemon juice.  Make sure you don’t have any paper cuts though or you will curse the day you were born or decided to squeeze fresh lemon juice.  As my Hubby learned the hard way, since he was the one who decided “Hey, I’ll juice the lemon with my bare sexy, manly cook­ing hands” and then cursed every­thing under the sun.

Pour Olive Oil over the Lamb.  Then Salt & Pep­per the Lamb.  Now you are going to take that mix of heav­enly rose­mary, thyme , gar­lic and lemon juice and rub your meat with it. (And for those of you who took that com­ment to a place that was totally inap­pro­pri­ate you are sick, sick folks).  We did this after the Lamb was placed in the cast iron skil­let (you could also cook it in a Dutch Oven or Roast­ing Pan).

Now add in your cut veg­gies.  We halved the pota­toes and car­rots.  The onions were quar­tered into fours.  You can also add a lit­tle salt and pep­per to your veg­gies.  Then cover the Lamb with the 1/2 cup of Red Wine.  After this cover the whole thing with tin foil if you don’t have a lid.  Since we used a cast iron skil­let we had to cover it with tin foil.  Mak­ing a tin foil tent cov­er­ing all the lamb, but not tight to the lamb itself.

Cook it on 400 degrees for 30 min­utes.  Then lower your oven tem­per­a­ture to 350 degrees cook for 1 hour.  At this point it will medium-rare. Your meat  ther­mome­ter when directly inserted into the cen­ter of the roast should reg­is­ter about 145 degrees F to 150 degrees F.

You want it only this much because you are going to let it rest for about 10–15 min­utes and then you can carve that bad boy up (don’t for­get to remove the string).  When serv­ing it, serve it with the veg­gies that roasted with it & use the liq­uid from the all the juices at the bot­tom of the pan to pour over the lamb slices and even your veg­gies.  It is SO.FREAKIN.GOOD.  Like I wrote ear­lier once you go lamb, you’ll never go back.

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