Sunday, July 15, 2012

French style Barbecued leg of lamb

For the bastille day dinner, I had decided to cook lamb as the main protein and as there were going to be 13 of us I decided to cook leg of lamb rather than rack, for mainly financial reasons.  It was a very hot day, so having the oven on for any length of time was not on, so I cooked this on the barbecue.  As this is not a very French way of cooking, I used French flavourings and added a red wine sauce at the end, so that if fit the brief.


I deboned these legs myself, but you can buy them already deboned, or if you are lucky enough to be getting local lamb from a butcher, you could probably get the butcher to do this for you. I cooked to two legs and this fed 13 with a little barbecued chicken.

After deboning the legs I smeared the inside with a grainy dijon mustard and sprinkled on a thinly sliced garlic clove and a sprig of fresh rosemary and salt and pepper.


I folded the meat over itself enclosing the rosemary and garlic and trussed them up to hold it all together.




Then I wrapped each leg in two sheets of tin foil and placed on the barbecue. I had one side of the barbecue on, and the other side off, and placed the lamb on the side that was off. This really cooks it as if it was an in an oven, which you could also do.


I cooked these for about 3 hours, as I was going for melting in the mouth, slow cooked lamb.  After 3 hours I unwrapped them. I did this in a dish to catch all the juices that came out to use in the sauce.


I now turned on the heat below the lamb to low and cooked them for a further 1/2 hour turning several times so that they took on a nice golden brown colour.


While the lamb was browning, I put 2 cups of red wine into a small sauce pan and simmered it down until it was about 1 cup, then added the lamb cooking juices and continued to simmer until it concentrated down further and tasted wonderful. I then added about a 1/4 cup of butter to richen the sauce, this is supposed to be a french dinner after all. I then sliced up the lamb and poured the sauce over it.


Though I say so myself, this tasted delicious and very French. One of our party even gave a short rendition of the Marseilles.


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