You know, its always a little frustrating for Matt that we have 5 freezers of all the good stuff and we only get the "reject cuts"... usually the broken seals or things that sit around for a long time and don't sell. He grumbles about it and we end up eating other things, but typically we don't get a chance to eat any lamb.
So, what do Father's Day gifts around here look like? I told Matt he could pick anything out of the freezer for dinner. What's he choose? Boneless leg of lamb!
Delicious. Granted, the one he nabbed was over 5lbs... we'll have plenty! I know there's a stigma out there that lamb needs to be masked with all kinds of spices and herbs. Around here, you will never see mint or a heavily herbed cut of lamb on our tables. Frankly, mint with lamb is like eating toothpaste with your meat. Gross.
A lot of times, we like to cook a leg of lamb on the grill with some sort of coffee/pepper rub on it. This time I decided to cook it up in our Dutch oven using the braising method. I opted to try out our Holy Smokers Triple B Rub that we now have available for sale.
Looking the rub, its pepper, salt, garlic and various other goods. Smells prefect for the job at hand. I pat the leg dry and rub it down with Triple B.
My Dutch oven was hot and ready on the stove to sear all the sides of the lamb to seal in all the juices before heading into the oven with some beef stock for 2.5hrs at 325F. After the initial time, I took the lid off and cooked it another 30mins.
While that was going, I started some sweet corn. Yes, its not in season here and I am usually not in favor of eating corn out of season because it is NEVER as good as fresh homegrown....but I have a 4yr old that really really wanted corn. So, I caved. In hopes of perking up the corn we boiled it with some milk and a whole stick of butter. I mean, it still wasn't super, but I'll take it for now.
Braising this lamb in the stock/rub liquid made for some really tender juicy lamb. I pulled it apart with a couple of forks. Immediately I had a couple of vultures swoop in to do some "taste testing" and it was fully approved by Matt and Felicity. We ate some of the bigger chunks and left the rest for leftovers. I saved the juice too and poured it over top of the pulled meat to just keep adding that flavor while in the fridge. The meat was definitely the highlight of the evening.
If a leg of lamb seems intimidating for anyone to try and cook, this was a really simple method and had great results. Highly recommend.
It wasn't a normal Father's Day for us, but made a little extra special as we also had little James baptized. While he hasn't made anything easy for us, he still makes everything worth it. Felicity is pretty proud of that little brother too.
~Until next time
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