Baked lamb leg: cooking recipes

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Lamb has always been considered an exquisite classic of the East. Over the past decades, she has thoroughly strengthened her culinary popularity in the West. Today, lamb can be easily bought at any butcher shop. Despite the availability, lamb is still an unconventional Russian food, and its preparation becomes a real culinary event every time. Let's try today to join and learn the wonderful world of oriental cuisine.

Lamb leg

It is in this part of the carcass that the least amount of fat is made, which makes the leg of lamb not only a tasty delicacy, but also useful. Of course, no one will cook lamb every day. This is a great dish for a festive table: it looks very impressive on the outside, has a great spicy aroma and tastes just magical.

Many novice housewives think that cooking this dish is extremely difficult. In fact, knowing a few culinary tricks and oriental subtleties, even a beginner will master the basics and basic stages of cooking lamb.

Secrets and recommendations for choosing meat

Before cooking, the leg of lamb must be rinsed with hot water. It will help remove all impurities. It is also recommended to cut off the maximum amount of fat. Do not remove fat completely! A small fat layer will protect the meat from drying out during baking in the oven. It is important that the fat layer is not only thin, but also uniform.

In order to get tender lamb meat without a characteristic unpleasant odor on your table, you should look for a fresh carcass in a butcher shop. It is milk lambs that have light and elastic meat without a pungent odor and unpleasant yellow fat. It is important that the muscle fibers are light red in color. If the meat is brown or red, then it is old.

To get juicy meat, you need to bake a leg of lamb in foil or a sleeve. It is not recommended to make cuts and stuff the meat with garlic, vegetables or something else. Whole roasting will keep all the juices.

Features of cooking lamb

Lamb is a versatile meat, it can be baked both with aromatic herbs and with vegetables or herbs.

Cooking time for a leg of lamb baked in a sleeve or foil will vary depending on the weight of the meat piece. As a rule, 1 kg of lamb is recommended to be kept in the oven for at least 40 minutes. And always add 20 minutes - to the total weight.

The readiness of meat can be checked with a special culinary thermometer or an ordinary wooden toothpick. The thermometer should show 57 ° Cmedium rare, 68 well-done. The doneness of the meat piece may also show light pink clear juice flowing from the puncture site with a toothpick.

It is not recommended to cut a leg of lamb baked in foil immediately after it has been removed from the oven. So that the meat juices inside the piece are evenly distributed, and the meat becomes perfectly tender and very tasty, you should leave it alone for 10 minutes. A longer simple and untimely serving of lamb to the table can threaten a frozen layer of fat on meat slices, which is completely unappetizing.

Marinating

No recipe for a leg of lamb in the oven is complete without a description of the marinating process. The marinade is a very important part of the culinary process. Experienced oriental housewives do not recommend neglecting them.

It is a properly prepared marinade that allows the leg of lamb, like any other type of meat, to reveal its rich taste and unique aroma. From a huge variety of seasonings and spices, we advise you to choose: mustard, rosemary, oregano, thyme, red paprika, lemon juice and ginger root. The herbs you will use for rubbing your feet can be dry or fresh.

In many Eastern countries, basil, sesame, sage, pine nuts, cinnamon and mint are often added to lamb dishes. In addition, if you ask knowledgeable oriental culinary experts how to cook a leg of lamb, then the majority will name another Central Asian seasoning - zira. This kind of spicevery popular, used in cooking a large number of dishes with and without meat.

Marinade options

What marinades are there for lamb?

1. Vegetable oil, parsley, bay leaf, lemon juice. Mix, add chopped onion. Pour in 180 ml of white wine, mix and marinate the meat for a day.
2. For 5 hours, the leg of lamb can be marinated in a mixture of olive oil, parsley, cilantro, rosemary. Onion rolled in a meat grinder is added to the resulting fragrant mass.
3. Lemon juice, crushed garlic, soy sauce, mint.
4. Mix two onions with bay leaf, parsley, cloves, lemon juice and s alt. Add one teaspoon of sugar and 460 ml of water. Boil the brine, cool and pour over the lamb. Marinating time - 6 hours.
5. Two garlic cloves mixed with 220 g full-fat yogurt. Add two teaspoons of red paprika, hot pepper and mint. Spread the mixture on the leg, leave for 10 hours.

Leg of young lamb with rosemary and garlic

We offer to prepare a simple but very effective dish. The recipe for baked lamb leg with rosemary and garlic will be a real decoration of the festive table. Juicy meat pulp, an incredible aroma of herbs, a ruddy appetizing crust - a dish that will impress households and guests.

List of ingredients

For cooking you will need:

• ram's leg;
• 2 tablespoons olive oil;
• 3 clovesgarlic;
• two sprigs of fresh rosemary;
• sweet paprika - teaspoon;
• hot or black pepper;
• s alt to taste.

Cooking method

Taking into account the tips and recommendations described above, we remove excess films, veins, fat from the lamb leg. We mix spices and aromatic herbs prepared for pickling in a small bowl. We advise you to take ground pepper, cilantro seeds, rosemary, sweet paprika for this recipe. Add a pinch of s alt and rub the leg of lamb with these products. Let the meat marinate for 2 hours. If there is time and opportunity, then we leave the leg for a day in the refrigerator.

Put the marinated meat on foil, wrap it as tightly as possible. This will keep all the juice. The oven is already preheated to 130 ° C by this time. Put the meat on a baking sheet and bake for 1.5 hours. After 90 minutes, increase the temperature to 190 ° C. Leave the meat to bake for another hour.

Lamb leg with quince baked in sleeve

This dish is worthy of a royal table. The recipe for lamb leg with quince and fragrant rosemary is a real find for the hostess. If you choose the right marinade, the lamb turns out incredibly tender, and the quince makes the meat also insanely fragrant.

List of ingredients

You will need:

• 2 kg lamb meat;
• half a tablespoon of s alt (you can use a ready-made mixture of s alt and spices);
• one head of garlic;
• half of a small lemon;
• dry rosemary-1, 5 art. spoons;
• vegetable oil -3 tbsp. spoons;
• butter - 40 grams;
• quince - 2 pieces.

Cooking method

As in the first recipe, we start cooking by removing films and fat. Motes and lint may remain on the surface of the film. They will interfere with the marinating and baking process. If you could not find the meat of a young lamb, then we also remove excess fat (only a uniform layer of fat, the width of which reaches 3-5 mm).

For pickling, we take the simplest and most affordable spices: rosemary, s alt, black pepper. Seasonings can be ground with a blender or grind in a mortar. Add chopped garlic and a spoonful of sunflower oil to the spices. Rub the lamb leg with the mixture. Let marinate for 4 hours. If you managed to get young meat, then the marinating time is reduced to 1 hour.

After marinating, cover the meat with slices of garlic and cubes of butter. We place the leg of lamb (the photo will help beginners determine the size of the sleeve and the method of fixing the corners) in the baking sleeve. We make several small holes with a knife so that the sleeve does not swell and tear. The oven heats up to 170 °C. The leg languishes for 2 hours. You can understand that the meat is ready using the methods described above (thermometer, toothpick). Also, meat will "tell" about readiness, which will be easily separated from the bone.

After 2 hours, take the sleeve out of the oven and carefully untie one corner. Spoon wateringmeat piece with exuded fat. This will make the meat juicier. At the same time, we put quince cut into small slices into the sleeve. Tie the corner again. We put the leg in the oven for another 25 minutes. For an appetizing golden crust, cut the sleeve down the center and leave the meat for another 3-5 minutes in the "Grill" or "Top Heat" mode.

By the way, you can put whole potatoes or slices of sweet carrots in the sleeve along with the leg of lamb. Previously, it is recommended to cover the vegetables with the same mixture of spices that was used to marinate the meat. You can bake a lamb leg just on a baking sheet. But in a sleeve or foil, the process will take place much faster in time.

In conclusion, useful information for those who adhere to proper nutrition or on a diet. A 100-gram piece of lamb leg that has been baked in the oven has 192 calories. The dish can be considered dietary if you add vegetables as a side dish.