Leg of lamb, roast or Braise.

Cafe Society
1

Every couple years for the Holidays I change it up and do lamb. Usually a shank, which I give a nice braise too. However when I went to look this year, they had Semi-boneless leg of NZ lamb for a deal too good to pass up. Certainly a piece of meat that will roast very well also.
Will I prefer the amazing flavor infused that comes from a braised hunk of beast, or maybe the nice perfect crust of a well roasted piece is better. The braise provides amazingly flavored potatoes and veggies. But the roast does does provide left overs more structurally appropriate for sammiches, and there will be many leftovers.

It will have to sit in it’s cryopak sleeping bag while I figure this out for a couple days.

2

Roald Dahl might know the answer.

3

Roast a leg. Poke holes with a knife all around the leg. In each whole stick a small clove of garlic, the end of a scallion, and a piece of a sweet pepper, then slice them off flush with the meat. Start the roast at 350F for 20-30 minutes then reduce heat to 300 and let cook until your desired doneness. Get it to at least 145F in the center for safety.

4

That’s more or less how I would do it but I would pull the roast a bit early. Let it rest, covered on the counter while you heat the oven to it’s highest blast furnace level. When it peaks, put the roast back in for 10-15 minutes just to help set a nice crust.

5

For me, the flavor of braised lamb gets a little too intense/gamy. I’d roast it.

6

I like braised for stew, roasted for stand-alone. A lamb curry with roasted lamb is wonderful. When I do lamb chops, I do a sear on the stove top and finish in the oven. They’re always perfect.

7

I just roasted a semi-boneless NZ leg of lamb (trial run before Christmas dinner) and it came out perfect. Can’t wait to do another one on Tuesday, although that will probably be boneless. Semi-boneless?! WTF was that?! It had a big honking bone.

8

145? No thank you, 135 at most for me.
I guess that is another substantial difference, the roast can be eased into the perfect level of medium rare, the braised doesn’t work the same. Leaning toward a roast now.

9

That’s fine really, and why I reduce the heat after a while, so you can catch it at just the right temperature and not leaving it uncooked at the bone.

10

Mmmm yum, roast for me. I do lamb every year on Christmas day, then use the leftovers for curry the next day.

11

My favorite way to do a boneless lamb leg is to open it up and spread a mess of bleu cheese (or feta if you can’t hack the good stuff) blended with shallots and a bit of olive oil thickly all over the inside. Roll it back up and tie it then slather the outside with a paste of garlic cloves, salt, rosemary and olive oil all pounded or ninja blended together. Slide that into the oven and don’t be paranoid that it smells like dirty sweat socks for a while, trust. Take it to your preferred level of rarity and slice it so everyone gets plenty of the cheese mess in the middle. This is really good, but if you have a small house be ready for it to stay smelly for a day or two. This is a seriously aromatic method!

12

Of course the answer is both - roast the lamb and then braise the leftovers when making your Leftover lamb shepherd’s pie.

13

Still in cryopack? What I would personally do is one of 2 things.

Lazy way - remove all the paper from the outside of the cryopack, toss in the sous vide bath at 135 overnight or until we decide we want to start dinner, but at least 6 hours, overnight better. Cook up some form of veggitude - mashed potatoes, a good tossed salad, and a nice boule of sourdough bread is good. Take the cooking juices out of the bag and turn into gravy with the addition of some good defatted chicken stock if it needs it [we find that cooking meat that is well marbled makes for some good juices int he cryopack, especially if we do a flat of pork ribs] if we do a roux, a good flour and butter golden roux works the best. Cornstarch or arrowroot if you are really lazy.

Long way - Get out the good roasting pan [likethis, my mom got it back in the 50s, but instead of a a rack it has a sort of grid with half inch spacing] get a bag each of baby potatoes, boiling onions, baby carrots, a bunch of celery, a small bunch of thyme, parsley, rosemary, a couple lemons and a couple bulbs of garlic. Prep the veggies, take one bulb of garlic, one sprig of rosemary and reserve. Make a bed of the veggies and herbs, and take the roast out of the bag, dump the juices [if any] into the bottom of the roasting pan, poke holes and stick a sliver of garlic or blade of rosemary into each hole. Juice the lemons onto the roast, sprinkle with some salt and pepper and add a couple cups of a mix of 1:1:1 olive oil, lemon juice or dry white wine and chicken broth to the bottom of the roasting pan. Pop in at 425 F and roast for about 45 minutes or so, basting every 10 minutes or so. Uncover, keep roasting another 15 minutes, then take the roast out to rest while the veggies get to cook another 15 minutes recovered. Take and bowl up the veggies, slice the lamb and serve with gravy made from the pan juices.

I might consider chopping it into chunks and making a good stew/curry/soup … we tend to have 3 or 4 cryos of lamb in the freeze at any given point [fully bone in, semiboneless or boneless, I think there is still a rack of chops right now] but we are untypical for most Americans - we also tend to have a couple geese, a couple ducks, I just added a couple pair of venison medallions and found a pound each of ground ostrich, bison and kangaroo. We tend to be moderately adventurous when eating. [oh, and a beef heart, a couple pork hearts and a tub of about a pound of duck hearts from the Chinese grocery in Hartford CT]