Serves 4
This is the best way to cook a roast lamb. The result is this tender, melt in your mouth lamb meat and crispy skin which makes you wish there was more skin around the lamb! I happen to use the lamb leg in this recipe, but if you choose to use the lamb shoulder instead, there will be more fat within the meat so it becomes even more tender. Nevertheless, this roast lamb leg is equally as tender – and there is just enough fat in and around it to create a delicious flavor. This recipe was inspired by a combination of Kylie Kwong and George Calombaris’ Roast Lamb recipe in July 2010’s issue of “Good Food Magazine”.. but I have definitely changed it to make it simpler, and substituted oregano for rosemary instead because I can’t help it, hehe. I use Rosemary EVERY TIME I cook lamb! The combination between rosemary herbs and lamb meat is just amazing – they just go so well together. Enjoy the recipe!
Ingredients:
2kg Boneless Lamb Leg
5 fresh garlic cloves, chopped
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp Dried Rosemary
1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 1/2 cups water
Chopped carrots, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, potatoes and parsnip
1/2 tsp Dried Basil
Salt and Pepper
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 160C fan forced.
- Mix the chopped garlic, salt, rosemary and olive oil together in a small bowl to form a paste.
- Rub the paste generously all over the lamb, massaging gently.
- Place the marinated lamb onto a roasting dish. Fill the roasting dish with water. Cover the dish with aluminium foil.
- Reduce heat down to 110C fan forced and place the roasting dish in the oven. Cook slowly for 4 hours.
- After 4 hours, increase oven heat to 180C fan forced and remove aluminium foil. Cook for 1 hour.
- Place the chopped carrots, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, potatoes and parsnip onto a large, flat baking tray on a single layer. Season by sprinkling dried basil, salt and pepper. Drizzle with some olive oil.
- Place the veggies and potatoes in the oven to cook along with the lamb. Cook the veggies and potatoes for approx. 30 minutes – or depending on oven, until the potatoes are crunchy.
- Once the lamb is cooked, allow meat to rest for 10 minutes before carving and serving with roast veggies and potatoes. Drizzle the lamb juices from the roasting dish all over the carved meat and potatoes. Serve also with steamed peas, corn and brocolli if desired.
Edit 19/7/2010: I cooked this dish again last weekend for a group of guests with a lamb leg as well as a lamb shoulder. I must say, the lamb shoulder is a lot more tender and tasted divine! It’s got a little bit more fat in the meat therefore provides a really good, tender juiciness in the meat. I would highly recommend you use this recipe for the lamb shoulder next time around! The leg is still pretty good of course, but if you prefer a bit more taste of lamb fat, shoulder is the way to go.
To serve, I’ve used the Parsnip, Onion, Mushroom and Thyme recipe from this entry.
We just served everything up on the kitchen island and got our guests to “help themselves” to the meat, gravy (using the juices from the lamb added with some flour), roast parsnip, garlic bread and green peas! It turned out to be quite a feast 🙂
Kimba's Living 
Great blog!I've recently started making slow roasted pork shoulder but want to try it with lamb shoulder too. I cook mine for about 7 hours all up and you don't even really need to carve it!Thanks for the tip about putting water at the bottom of the tray. I never put water in the bottom of the tray but do cover it with foil.
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Your lamb looks truly delicious. I roasted 500g of lamb few nights ago. I did it slightly different. I chopped onion, garlic and celery finely with blender and smeared the mixture & honey all over the lamb and let it marinate for overnight. Before I roast it I topped with a lot of cracked black pepper, cumin powder, Szechuan ground pepper, 5 spice powder and pinch of chilli powder .It tastes delicious, the only disappointment is I forgotten to test the meat with my new purchased thermometerBon appetite.
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