Leg of Lamb Experience?


 
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Dave Lewis

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I am planning to cook a leg of lamb this Easter Sunday, but I have never cooked a leg before, just chops. I did a search on this website, but there are not many leg of lamb discussions.

I intend to marinade it overnight with a recipe that I got from Sunset magazine about 8 or 9 years ago. I have used it many times on lamb chops (contains, red wine, garlic, rosemary as I remember). It is excellent.

Anyway, I purchased a 4 pound boneless leg of lamb from Costco. I have read several recipes in various cookbooks and websites that say to trim off all fat and others that say to leave it alone. The slight majority seem to be the trim it of all fat folks. Which is the prefered method for the WSM?

I intend to cook it at 325 - 350 lid temps to rare (similar to cooking a prime rib roast on the WSM) A couple of chunks of oak for the smoke. My guess is that it will take about 2 hours to reach 125 degrees internal. Any comments or suggestions on the method of cook or would low and slow be more appropriate?
 
Dave,

I haven't done lamb on my WSM yet but I do it on my kettle all the time. I cook it at 350-400 to rare (120-125) and I leave most of the exterior fat on in order to baste the pan of root vegetables under it (mmmm lamb fat). Try making a paste with the garlic, rosemary, olive oil and some lemon juice to rub on after you marinate it, this makes a great crust on the outside and is a huge hit every time I make it.

I don't think lamb would benefit from low and slow because it is so lean. Good luck.

Tim
 
Well no one seems to have much to say on cooking a leg of lamb on the WSM, so I will post how it went in case someone else tries to Q one:

I trimmed most of the fat off of a 4 pound boneless leg of lamb purchased from Costco.

Cut little slits all over it and stuffed a sliver of garlic and sprig of rosemary in each slit

Marinaded it for about 7 hours in mix of red wine, brown sugar, soy sauce and dijon mustard.

Fired up the WSM standard method for a 325-350 degree, no water in the pan, cook. Lit one chimney of coals and when fully lit, dumped into ring and added a 1/2 chimney unlit on top. When all coals were a nice gray, I added 2 fist sized chunks of oak, assembled the WSM, added the lamb to the top grate and set the bottom vents at 33%

The lid temps rose to 390 initially and then dropped to 330 fairly quickly. I opened up the vents to about 40% and the temps ranged 330-338 throughout the cook. No further vent adjustments were needed. Outside temp was 62 degrees, no wind.

The lamb hit 125 degrees internal an hour and 20 minutes later. That amounted to 20 minutes per pound. I let it rest for 30 minutes under foil. The temp rose to 134 during resting.

Sliced 1/2 inch thick slices, 1/8 inch deep smoke ring. Just a hair under med-rare (a little too cooked, next time I will take it off at 120 degrees for a bit rarer meat) Very tasty, except the oak smoke flavor was IMHO a little too dominant. It wasn't bitter or overpowering, just a little dominant. Next time I will try 1 fist sized chunk of oak instead of 2.

Reserved the marinade and boiled it for 15 minutes as finishing sauce for the plate. Excellent.

1 chimney of charcoal would have been sufficient. After an hour and a half the coals were still pretty intact. I closed all the vents to smother the fire and will reuse the coals next cook.

Thats it, pretty easy cook, good results.
 
There are so many Oaks out there and some are better than others. The Post Oak from Texas is good and the rest that I've tried I won't use again.
Just my personal experience,
 
If you can get your hands on some, grapevine goes well with lamb (and chicken). It tends to be very mild, and doesn't seem to work as well with beef or pork, and the light character of it protects you from oversmoking with it.

Rick
 
The oak I use and have access to is white oak from Fast Track Marketing. My wood selection is pretty limited. I have white oak and apple in abundance (50 pound bag each) Hickory and Mesquite can be purchased everywhere. And, a very little cherry which is rapidly dwindling because cherry is becoming my favorite flavor of wood. I will have to call Fast Track and buy a 50 pound sack of cherry pretty soon. I will see if he has different varieties of oak, but if memory serves me, he doesn't.
 
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