Category: lamb

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lamb

brined leg of lamb

You can’t beat a roast lamb, especially in the Spring. I have a whole bunch of lamb recipes on this site, but how about one more? This technique for brined leg of lamb guarantees flavour and tenderness. I’m a big fan of brining, it’s an excellent shortcut to ensuring your meat comes out great every time.

A good recipe starts with great produce – try and buy Red Tractor or organic if you can afford it. Beyond that, brining is a simple yet effective technique used to enhance the flavour, tenderness, and juiciness of meat. Here are some tips and techniques for brining meat:

Should you brine lamb? Yes, lamb can benefit from brining. Brining helps to tenderize the meat and add flavour.

Can you brine lamb for too long? Yes, you can brine lamb for too long. Over-brining can cause the meat to become mushy and overly salty. As a general rule, brine lamb for no longer than 24 hours. 12 hours is the perfect time for about a kilo leg of lamb.

What is the best way to brine? The best way to brine is to use a 5% salt solution (50 grams of salt per litre of water). You can also add other flavourings to the brine, such as herbs, spices, and sugar.

What is the method of brine? The method of brine involves mixing the salt and water to create a brine solution. Place the meat in a large plastic bag or container and pour the brine over it. Make sure the meat is fully submerged in the brine. Cover and refrigerate for the desired time.

What not to put in brine? Avoid putting acidic ingredients in the brine, such as vinegar, lemon juice, or wine. Acidic ingredients can break down the meat and affect the texture.

What should go in a brine? In addition to salt, you can add other flavourings to the brine, such as:

  • Sugar: Helps to balance the saltiness and adds a sweet flavour.
  • Herbs: Adds aroma and flavour to the meat.
  • Spices: Adds complexity and depth to the flavour.
  • Garlic: Adds a savoury flavour.
  • Onion: Adds a sweet and savoury flavour.

In conclusion, brining is a great way to enhance the flavour, tenderness, and juiciness of meat. When brining lamb, use a 5% salt solution and avoid over-brining. Add other flavourings to the brine for extra flavour. Avoid using acidic ingredients in the brine. Happy cooking!

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Brined leg of lamb

Take your lamb game to the next level with my brined leg of lamb recipe! Tender, juicy, and bursting with flavour.
Course Main Course
Cuisine British
Keyword brine, easter, meat, spring
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Servings 6 people

Equipment

  • Meat thermometer

Ingredients

For the brine:

  • 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
  • 1 sprig rosemary
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 carrot roughly chopped
  • salt see method
  • 1 kg leg of lamb bone in

For roasting:

  • 2 carrots sliced lengthways
  • 1 onion halved

Instructions

  • Add all the brine ingredients to a large bowl big enough to take the lamb easily. Don't add the lamb just yet. Set the bowl and ingredients on a scale and fill with water.
  • Make a note of the weight of the water and then calculate 5% of that - water weight x 0.05. Add that amount of salt (so if your water weighed 1,750g, you'd be adding 87.5g salt). Stir briskly until all dissolved.
  • Add the lamb and cover, and refrigerate for 12 hours.
  • Preheat the oven to 250°C. Drain the lamb and discard all the brine ingredients. Pat the lamb dry. Add the halved carrots and onion to a baking tray and set the lamb on top. Roast for 15 minutes and then turn it down to 140°C. Roast for 2 - 3 hours or until the meat reaches 65°C for medium rare.

Video

Notes

Don't like calculating percentages? Shout it at your nearest digital assistant ie. Alexa, Google "what's 5% of 1750...?"
Categories
food lamb

lamb recipes for easter

Eating lamb at Easter is a tradition in many parts of the world, including the UK. Lamb is often seen as a symbol of spring and new beginnings, which makes it a popular choice for Easter meals. In the UK, roast lamb is often served on Easter Sunday, either as a traditional Sunday roast or as part of a special Easter feast.

There are also some religious connotations to eating lamb at Easter, as lamb is often associated with sacrifice and redemption in Christian theology. In the Bible, Jesus is sometimes referred to as the “Lamb of God,” which has led to lamb becoming a traditional Easter food in many Christian countries.

I’m a huge fan of lamb (make sure you buy Red Tractor). Generally speaking the rule is – low and slow. Sear the outside then leave it alone in a low oven for hours. And even more importantly, give it plenty of time to rest and relax. The fat and juices in lamb needs time to chill after cooking.

If you want to riff, rosemary, garlic and lemon are the classic flavours you can’t go wrong with. Want a little more inspiration? Here are some of my favourites:

Roast lamb with a nori crust

For something a little different, seaweed gives a savoury, herby note that carries through the juicy lamb. You can find nori and other dried seaweed products among the Japanese ingredients of larger supermarkets.

roast lamb nori crust with rosemary
A different take on roast lamb, using seaweed to season the meat.
Check out this recipe

Spring lamb with chianti gravy

This is a dead easy recipe from Jamie Oliver. One for if you don’t want too much rush.

Spring lamb, vegetable platter, mint sauce and chianti gravy
A refreshing yet wholesome dinner.
Check out this recipe

Riga’s lamb

A lovely heartwarming recipe from Leon. Lamb, tomatoes and pasta all baked up for ages. Serve with spring greens.

Rigas's lamb
A different take on roast lamb.
Check out this recipe

Italian roast lamb

Sort of like porchetta but… lambetta?… this leg or shoulder of lamb is stuffed and rolled.

Italian roast lamb
A fragrant and tasty roast lamb dish.
Check out this recipe

Roast lamb

…Or just have something a little more traditional.

roast lamb
This British Sunday classic is easy to do but just needs time.
Check out this recipe

Don’t forget to enjoy them with my perfect roast potatoes 🙂

Categories
curry curry powder lamb potatoes tomato

is HelloFresh worth using?

HelloFresh set me a challenge: recreate one of their recipes. HelloFresh have a wide range of recipes on their website, so I tried HelloFresh’s Bombay-style lamb curry. Was it as expensive? Was it easier than getting it delivered?

Delivery box recipe services send you a set amount of ingredients each week to make specific dinners. Set your dietary preferences, how often you want a delivery, and away you go. Weekly you’ll get ingredients delivered to your door. HelloFresh offer such a service, among others, and has been traditionally popular with professional couples, small families looking for inspiration, and those just looking to go beyond ready meals.

I browsed HelloFresh’s most popular recipes. I was impressed with the range of dishes from many different cuisines, none of which would look out of place on a modern TV cookery show. I asked Mrs Spud what she fancied and she asked for their lamb curry.

I won’t go through every stage of the recipe, you can read the recipe on HelloFresh’s website here.

It’s a quick stir-fry of lamb mince, tomatoes, green beans and onion served with lightly spiced potatoes. It was tasty! There’s not far to hide with the small amount of ingredients, and it reminds me of an dish I used to cook called balti beef. Definitely a good one for midweek meals.

I made a video of my thoughts and a quick cookalong. Have a look here:

Comparing cost

Per portion, my ingredients cost £4.32. You could probably get that down with bulk buying and buying cheaper brands, but I went for mid-range ingredients from Tesco.

HelloFresh have a blanket cost depending on how frequently you want meals delivered, so it varies per portion. But the range is from £3.22 to £5 per serving. I expected my meal to be much cheaper, but I was surprised how similar the costs were.

Comparing time

The time quoted on HelloFresh’s website was 20 minutes. I took about 26 minutes; I wasn’t hanging around but the additional peeling, chopping and grating added up. So the HelloFresh version is there.

Verdict

HelloFresh serve a perfect need for cook-curious but time-poor people. The cost surprised me the most, being really close when making from scratch. The pre-portioning made things quicker for sure. When you buy yourself you can end up with half a jar of something or a jar of spice you don’t know what else to do with. That also gives HelloFresh’s downside, in that the prepackaged ingredients are individually wrapped. This means less food waste, but a little more packaging waste. It’s a delicate balance but a good alternative if you want to expand your culinary horizons but want tested recipes.

HelloFresh’s lamb curry recipe is here

And check out the full range of HelloFresh’s recipes here

HelloFresh have sponsored this post; I was not give any instruction what to say and my opinion was not influenced.

Categories
bread cumin lamb

grilled lamb with cumin flatbread

I love lamb. A quick count says I have 37 recipes on here alone tagged with lamb. When a very good friend was coming over around their birthday I asked them what they’d like for dinner: they said lamb. Another friend of mine won a burger competition with a cracking lamb patty. When Easter rolls around, as a nation we like nothing better than making sure there’s a leg of lamb on the table. At the other end of the spectrum, a boozy night out often ends with a pile of shredded lamb doner.

But perhaps surprisingly, this isn’t the case for our American cousins. Lamb is a mystery meat for them, eyed suspiciously as a greasy, grey mess. In 2014 the American ambassador couldn’t take it any more lamb. This isn’t personal to Mr. Barzun however, the American consumption of lamb is a puny 0.4kg per capita (in other words, each US citizen eats just 400g of lamb per year). In Europe it’s 1.9kg but in the UK we eat 4.7kg per person per year – a pretty staggering amount. We pale next to the mighty Greeks though, who chow down three times that amount!

Source: OECD (2016), Meat consumption (indicator). doi: 10.1787/fa290fd0-en (Accessed on 20 May 2016)

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this lamb recipe has it’s roots firmly in Greek culture. If there’s any nation that knows what to do with a sheep, it’s Greece.

This is very simple. Marinate some lamb in herbs and spices, then char on the outside. You can do it on a griddle pan or the BBQ. I’ve also tossed in some super-quick flatbreads here: a tip of the hat to my old chum James for the idea of adding cumin seeds which are just genius. If you’ve never made your own flatbreads then give them a try – they require so little skill and can also be cooked on a BBQ if you feel like it. Served with Greek style accompaniments this is a dead easy midweek dinner. Maybe we can show the Americans what they’re missing?

This recipe is part of the lamb recipe challenge. I was reimbursed for the ingredients.

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grilled lamb with cumin flatbread

Course Main Dish
Cuisine Greek
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Servings 2
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 2 lamb leg steaks
  • Pinch dried chill flakes
  • 2 cloves garlic finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano

For the flatbreads:

  • 150 g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 heaped teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the salad:

  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 1 red onion sliced
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 10 - 12 black olives

To serve:

  • crumbled feta
  • houmous
  • salad

Instructions

  • Make the marinade for the lamb: mix the garlic, rosemary, oregano, chilli flakes with enough olive oil to make a paste. Season with salt and pepper and rub all over the lamb. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
  • For the flatbreads mix all the ingredients together with enough cold water to make a soft, springy dough. Cover to rest while you get on with everything else.
  • Preheat a grill or griddle pan to a medium heat and cook the lamb steaks on each side a total of 10 - 12 minutes until cooked to your liking. They will also need to rest for 5 minutes on a plate before serving.
  • Meanwhile, slice the cucumber and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Combine all the salad ingredients into a bowl and allow to marinate until serving.
  • For the flatbreads divide into two pieces and dry fry in a very hot pan until bubbling on one side, and then flip (this will take 2 - 3 minutes). Cook until browned.
  • Serve the lamb sliced with the flatbreads, strain the excess vinegar off the salad and serve on the side. Crumble some feta over the lamb. It's also pretty good with lettuce, tomatoes and houmous.
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