Hi guys, Jamie here. I'm going to show you how to make the perfect roast leg of lamb. Let me talk
about preparing, roasting, resting and carving. I want you to prepare it so it's going to guarantee
juiciness and flavour, and celebration, but look this is a leg of lamb. It's a beautiful thing,
this is a 2.4 kilo leg of lamb. There's many ways that you can flavour this, to your own preference,
let me give you an old-school reliable kind of preference that I love. It's using garlic,
rosemary which is so classic with many many meats, and then divisive anchovy. A lot of
people say they don't like anchovy, because you might have rubbish ones on a pizza it's like ew,
right. But anchovies you know a little bit, will dissolve, you will not taste anchovy,
it's a seasoning. How do we get this, into that okay, and the way we're simply going to do that
is by taking a small knife, and just stabbing it evenly down to the bone, and then sticking your
finger in, okay. So we'll do that evenly about sort of two and a half inches apart, a little
olive oil just a little bit just to get the fat story going, we'll hit it up with salt and pepper,
and we'll rub that all over the lamb. So that's basic seasoning happening right, then garlic, you
want it to be elegant and delicate. Pull off the rosemary and then the divisive anchovy. Just run
the knife down the length and then in half. Grab yourself a little bit of garlic and the rosemary,
and the anchovy, then we stick it in there like that, it's going to be a beautiful thing.
Just get it in there, that can go in our tray right, and we're going to do a trivet. The trivet
is to catch the juices from the roasting joint of meat, and give you the potential to make the best
gravy ever. What you're going to do is, have one or two chunky bits of carrot, get that in there,
a couple of little stalks of celery, clanks of that just going in like that. A couple of onions,
you can put a bit of extra herb in there if you want. So a little kind of you know,
let's call it a glass of water goes in, and this will catch the juices from the lamb. Now let's
talk about how we roast the lamb first of all. If you're going to roast that, do not take it from
the fridge to the oven, you know. It's going to stress, it's going to make it tough, right
take this out of the fridge at least one or two hours before. This looks amazing,
but what I want to do is give you a tip that I always use, for my normal standard
home oven. I've got it preheated to 220 degrees celsius which is nice and hot, and I'm going to
do two things that I think change the game. First up, I'm going to put this beautiful leg of lamb
directly onto the bars of the oven, right at the top, okay. Then this tray goes underneath,
so what's gonna happen is you're gonna get 360 degree roasting around that lamb,
as the fat melts here, it's going to go all the way down underneath, then drip into the tray.
So I think you're going to get a much better cook right, it's going to be a better roast.
Secondly, as soon as that oven is closed, I'm going to turn the temperature down to
180 degrees celsius. So it gets that immediate heat, and then it just, nice consistent 180
degrees celsius, which is 350 fahrenheight. and you'll roast that lamb beautifully.
So here in front of us we've got three legs of lamb, now this has had an hour and ten minutes
okay, and it had an internal temperature of about 63 degrees celsius. That's going to give
you roughly medium rare, yu know a little bit more pink. Here is what I would call medium or blushing
okay. So that's a nice way to cook it, because you know if some people want it more well done,
you can take it from the two ends. In the inside here it's just nice and blushing and
gorgeous and juicy, and then over here we've got well done. So that's two hours 10 minutes,
internal temperature 83 degrees celsius. There's a lot of cultures that really embrace this,
and actually different things happen right when you cook it like this. So let's get in there,
you want a nice carving knife, so a longer knife that's sharp. So long kind of carving movements
through the lamb like that. The outside cut here will always be a little bit more well cooked,
pretty quickly you can see it getting blushing, and we've got colour going in there. By the way
guys, I haven't told you, we've got to let these legs of lamb rest for at least half an hour, why?
Because it allows the heat to carry on penetrating the leg of lamb.
So when you take this out of the oven in the middle, the heat will be going up.
Then the middle one it's only had 10 more minutes and that'll just take some of that blush away,
this you know, it's really nice to cook it this long, you get different deeper flavours. You get
more gnarliness from the skin and the fat. What's interesting is it's a completely different product
right, so it is cooked through, but it's still actually juicy. I love all of these and I'll find
myself in summer, with the kind of pink cooked lamb, you know asparagus, peas, spinach, and then
this I love doing this when there's kind of more fennel, seeds, coriander seeds, thyme, garlic,
you know. Little spice rubs, getting in there. So there you go guys, that's how to prep,
flavour, and roast a beautiful leg of lamb, it's extraordinary. If you want loads of ideas for
that and the gravy, head over to JamieOliver.com
I think you're going to love it, check it out.