These days, you can often buy a pre-butterflied leg of
lamb at the supermarket (or ask your friendly neighbourhood butcher to take to
a lamb leg for you). However, boning out
a leg of lamb is actually really easy if you have a good sharp knife – so get your
butcher (or anyone who confesses to knowing how to do this) to show you
how.
Butterflied lamb
barbeque
Serves 4 or more –
depending on the size of the leg and whether it is part of a broader selection
of BBQ dishes
1.3kg leg of lamb (bone in) – served four plus leftovers
for tomorrow’s lunch
Bone out the leg.
Slice into the largest part of the leg so that it opens out to a fairly
uniform thickness. Or put your
pre-butterflied leg into a non-reactive dish for marinating.
Basic marinade for
lamb
2-5 cloves garlicOlive oil
1 lemon
Handful of fresh thyme (or rosemary)
Salt and pepper
Finely chop the garlic or pound in a mortar and pestle with some sea salt. Squeeze the lemon (you can also add finely grated lemon rind for extra lemony flavour – but make sure you only use the really yellow outer rind and not the bitter white pith).
At this point, I sprinkle over a few good pinches of sea
salt, a good grind of black pepper, the thyme (sprigs removed if I can be
bothered, but they burn/fall off when barbequed, so no need to fuss), a few glugs
of olive oil and then rub in the garlic and lemon juice. It’s all a bit messy, but it means that the
flavours of the marinade ingredients get up close and personal with the lamb,
which is the whole point of the marinade.
At this point, you can leave the lamb in the fridge for up to 24 hours,
turning occasionally, if you remember.
You can easily adjust your marinade to provide any number
of different flavours – add crushed anchovies for a real depth of flavour
(believe me, no-one will pick that the flavour is anchovies), smoked paprika
for a more Spanish flavour, Moroccan spices, chilli… my only rule is to steer
away from sugary ingredients (sweet chilli, honey, maple syrup, etc), as they
will tend to burn before the lamb is cooked.
At least 30 minutes (preferably 1 hour) before cooking,
get the lamb out of the fridge and allow to come up to room temperature –
cooking from cold is too much of a shock for the lamb and will give you a
tougher end result. Heat the barbeque.
As an aside, we have a very basic gas BBQ – no fancy lid
and 12 dials on the front. Every BBQ is
different and every day is different (in Wellington, the breeze varies from
gale to hurricane, so cooking time always has to be adjusted). So I can’t give you a definitive answer to
how long to cook your lamb. Put the lamb
on the BBQ skin side down. For the
smallish leg that I’ve shown you here, about 12 minutes/side, with a roasting
dish placed over the lamb for the second side did the trick (on a relatively
calm day). Generally speaking, you
wouldn’t need longer than 15 minutes/side unless the weather is really against
you. With a lid and a good day, you may
only need 10 minutes/side. Remember to
only ever turn your lamb once.
The MOTH keeps a close eye on things and will use his
technical finger prod technique to judge when it is done to perfection – he is committed to delivering perfect lamb and has been honing these skills over the years. He
can now size up the depth of the lamb, the weather and the BBQ and deliver
perfect results pretty much every time.
Don’t forget to rest the lamb. This is utterly essential – take it off the
BBQ, place it on a dish, loosely cover with foil (letting any steam escape) and
pop a folded tea towel on top. At least
15 minutes of resting and the lamb will relax, the cooking will be complete,
and you’ll have tender pink lamb ready to slice for everyone.Redcurrant jelly is our family’s traditional accompaniment.
We ate outside and the Crepescule rose looked lovely under the sun umbrella.