- Today
on Prime Time,
we are going to roast a whole lamb.
But we're not gonna do it whole.
- We're gonna do it what we consider a better way.
- The butcher way. - The butcher way.
- Yeah.
- Whole animal barbecue is awesome,
but it takes a lot of time and knowhow to do it right.
And you're like, oh,
I'm just gonna slow cook the whole thing,
and it's all gonna melt apart and fall apart
and be delicious.
That's not always true.
It doesn't end up turning out like that
because they are different muscles,
and they're cooking completely differently.
- So what we wanna do is do a whole animal barbecue
over an open fire but separating the whole animal out
so we are really getting the best of each kind.
We wanna do this with a lamb because the muscle structure
is the same for pork as it is for beef.
You have your leg, you have your loin,
you have your rib and rack, and you have your shoulder.
We're gonna break these down, talk about the best way
to cook them, and why.
Our breast plate just needs to be separated.
- Only use the saw when you're going through bone.
Traditionally, where we like to break the shoulder
is between the fifth and sixth rib, starting from the neck.
- [Brent] You get the very end of the breast plate.
It's a very different muscle structure,
and it's the very end of the shoulder blade as well,
so it's a natural seam.
(saw cutting through bone)
- So now we have our two shoulders.
- Next up, separate the belly.
It cooks completely different than the actual loin.
This white line here is the end of the shoulder blade.
Anything past that is gonna be a little more chewy.
We're gonna grill it.
We're gonna get a couple different textures out of it.
- How long do we want our rib chops to be?
I like a little bit of belly on there,
a little bit of fattiness.
Everything we're pulling off is gonna be our belly.
- We're just going to separate the legs.
(saw cutting through bone)
- Two legs, two shoulders.
Let's tackle this rib and loin.
- Just understand the anatomy is the same the same the same
across lamb, pork, beef.
This is where you would get your bone-in pork chops,
your bone-in rib chops, your rib eye steaks.
This is the tenderloin, and on the other side
of the tenderloin is what we just call the loin.
But if you cut it into chops,
that would be your New York strip or your porterhouse steak.
- These are our prized cuts.
Doesn't matter the animal.
These are what tend to go for a premium
because they're so tender.
Where that last rib is, cut on the other side of it.
We now have our loin chops and our rib chops.
- Ta da!
- Makes a lot of sense, huh?
You know you don't have to hold it if I'm holding it, right?
(saw cutting through bone)
Or are we just holding hands right now?
- Would it be quite as fun if we both weren't holding it?
Extremely undervalued cut of meat is the loin.
This is priced at half of what this is.
- With this lamb, it came in at 60 pounds.
About 50% of any animal is going to be bone.
You can conservatively say that this
is gonna feed about 45 to 50 people.
We're gonna go start a fire,
and then we're gonna start cooking.
(intense electronic music)
As you can see, Brent got a fire going.
Way to go, Brent!
- We're ready to go.
- Let's throw some lamb shoulders on there.
Those are the first things we need to get going.
We're trying to reach an internal temperature
of at least 190 degrees.
That's the temperature at which meat starts pulling
off of the bone really easily.
We seasoned it last night, so it has about 12 hours worth
of salting on it.
All that's really doing is allowing the salt
to get in further.
- We're just getting smoke on the outside,
but we're hanging it as low as possible
so it can get as much heat as possible.
- And this'll probably take about six hours
to get cooked all the way through
to the point of being able to pull all this meat
down here, which is what we really, really want.
This is gonna be super tender and very juicy
by the end of this.
- If we were cooking this as a whole animal,
the legs would definitely cook
to at least medium or medium well
while you're trying to get the shoulders cooked
all the way through so they are of a good consistency.
Leg of lamb is, in my opinion, best rare.
This is our whole point of breaking the whole thing down
is so that we can take our time
and still serve this the way that we want to.
- It's only been about 15 minutes.
We're gonna flip it so now we can start rendering
out this fatty side, and that's all we're gonna do all day
is flip 'em, spin 'em around!
(mid-tempo rock music)
- We're not cooking directly over the hard burning wood.
Coals will keep falling.
We'll keep pulling 'em out so that the meat hanging
over top it will cook a little bit more evenly.
You're not only paying attention to the meat,
you're paying attention to the heat,
where it's coming from.
Off this back side, we have a little bit
of a skirt here, so that's gonna radiate some heat,
so the one on the back is gonna cook a little bit faster
than the one on the front.
Everything matters.
This is a big open fire.
- My leg is burning right now.
- You chose shorts.
I--
- Dad vibes.
(upbeat, soulful music)
This is the loin.
This is what we call the saddle, the lamb saddle.
Once it's deboned, you have a large part of the spine,
so you can pretend like you're in Mortal Kombat.
- Yeah! - Yeah!
These are our two New York strips,
these are our tenderloins, this is a little bit of sirloin.
We're just gonna roll, tie the whole thing.
With lamb fat, a lot of that flavor comes from the fat,
and you wanna let that render itself.
We'll let this slowly roast over the open fire,
a little bit of indirect smoke,
get it up to about 100 degrees.
We're about three hours, so first hour,
second hour, third hour.
This is our rare section, rare to medium rare.
The muscles themselves are already pretty tender,
so we're really just slowly, slowly cooking them through,
letting the fat render.
Ben?
- Yes? - We look cool, right?
(Ben laughs) We look really cool!
- The wind's starting to pick up in the backyard.
We're three hours in, so that means we have
to be nimble with how we're doing this.
So we're just gonna keep these fires burning
a little bit brighter than we normally would
and keep them a little bit closer
to the meat than we normally would.
- [Brent] Open fire cooking is more about the feel.
There's a ton of different things that are gonna change.
You're in it for the day, it's a process.
- This is, to me, like getting to know meat
and what you're cooking with on a much deeper level.
- In South America, people have this in their home,
like Brazilian, Argentinian, cook whole animals
every single Sunday, and that is an amazing tradition.
Learn how to cook different muscles different ways.
It's just so much more engaging
than just throwing something on the grill.
(upbeat music)
(meat thuds against board) - And it's snack time.
- [Brent] We deserve a rack of lamb snack.
- We can have little snacks.
- Ooh!
- It makes it an all-day affair,
which is for your guests to be able to come by and be like,
oh, the ribs will be up in 15 minutes.
45 minutes after that, we'll have the loin roast.
And two hours after that, we'll have the pulled lamb.
Snack all day.
You would like to know what butchers do for therapy.
♪ La la la la la ♪
♪ La la la la la ♪ (mallet pounding on cleaver)
(upbeat music)
That sizzle that we're hearing,
as soon as we drop it, that's a good thing.
Brent's doing a good job.
So these took, what eight minutes?
You're just trying to render out a little bit
of that belly fat
that's gonna make-- - Can we please
just eat this? - Okay, I'm gonna shut up.
Let's do this.
- Holy (beep), that's so good.
Best thing ever is that we kept a large part
of the belly on.
It's nice and tender, super fatty.
This'll keep us going for another couple hours.
- Yeah, I think so.
- That is very, very good. - (laughs) It's so good!
- This is our loin.
- We deboned the whole thing so that it
would be able to be served as a roast.
Hopefully, it's just a nice medium rare all the way through.
- [Ben] I've never seen Brent be so tender
with anything before.
- [Brent] Woo hoo!
I'm very happy with this.
- [Ben] Your loin piece is here, your tenderloin there,
some belly meat right here, all wrapped in fat.
- This is more medium than medium rare.
I'm glad that we actually cooked it a little bit more
for the amount of fat that's on it.
All that rendered out.
Super tender.
Nice texture; this is awesome.
- Let's try leg of lamb.
Didn't take more than, what, two and a half hours?
- [Brent] Yeah.
- [Ben] Take out your femur bone,
this little kneecap here; cut around that.
(intense electronic music)
- [Brent] Super excited how evenly it really cooked through.
(intense electronic music)
- Oh, yeah.
That tastes like roast beef. - Mm-hmm.
- That's fantastic.
- For anyone that's ever had a complaint about eating lamb,
this is the steakiest lamb I've ever had.
Just wonderful, wonderful texture.
- That is so good.
- This on its own is one of the best freakin' legs
of lamb I've ever had.
(intense music)
- [Ben] That is a beautiful shoulder.
- Every piece is pulling back;
exactly what you're looking for
because you have a lot of fat on the outside,
a lot of inner muscular fat.
It's really just best all mixed together
like it's pulled pork.
- [Ben] You really want to still have a texture to it.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
- Oh man, this is the best part to me.
- This is the one.
Tons of fat, lots of different textures,
it's cooked the longest, so it's got the most smoke to it,
just so much flavor.
- [Ben] You don't want to just do everything one way.
You're just taking away some of the attributes
of some of the other pieces.
Get to know these muscles better,
and you're gonna get so much more out of them.
- Four different textures, four different types of cooking,
all of them excellent, all of them totally different
but so freaking delicious.
- That's how you do a whole animal barbecue butcher style.
(intense, upbeat electronic music)