Published May 1, 2007.
For a grilled leg of lamb recipe without the gristle or gaminess, plus great garlic flavor, we started with a meaty, boneless shank end. We separated the meaty loaves to create tidy mini-roasts from which we diligently trimmed away all visible fat and gristle, thus eliminating gamy flavors and making the roast very easy to carve once roasted. Next, we introduced garlic and herb flavors to our grilled leg of lamb recipe with a seasoned brine. We added even more garlic flavor by rubbing a roasted garlic paste onto one side of the lamb.
Look for rolled, boneless leg of lamb wrapped in netting, not butterflied and wrapped on a tray. The desirable cut is the shank end, which is the whole boneless leg without the sirloin muscle attached. If only bone-in or semi-boneless leg is available, ask your butcher to remove the bones for you. Plan on spending about 30 minutes trimming the lamb of fat and silver skin. This advance work is well worth the effort; your roasts will present elegantly and have a much cleaner flavor. (That said, even 10 minutes of trimming will improve the taste dramatically; see instructions below.) If you opt for the 30-minute trim, you will have enough meat scraps left over to make the Roasted Garlic Jus. The lamb can be trimmed, brined, rubbed with paste, and tied, then stored overnight in the refrigerator (do not season the meat). Allow the lamb to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before proceeding with the recipe.
Dear Friend,
These days, it’s pretty easy to get free recipes on the Internet. I’m sure a search for “roast chicken recipe” will turn up thousands and thousands. But, as with so much on the web, you should tread lightly if you don’t know the source.
In America’s Test Kitchen, our motto is, “Recipes that Work,” and our mission is to be your trusted source for recipes that work every time you use them. Our test cooks spend their days obsessively testing recipes until they offer consistently great results. As we like to say here, “We make the mistakes so you don’t have to.”
CooksIllustrated.com is the only place you can find not only 20 years' worth of our foolproof recipes, but also objective ratings of cookware, and blind taste tests for hundreds of everyday supermarket ingredients (hey, without the proper ingredients and equipment you can still run into problems — no matter how good the recipe).
Let me make a simple, no-nonsense offer. Try out our website FREE for a 14-Day, No-Hassle Trial Offer. I’m pretty confident that CooksIllustrated.com will quickly become an invaluable resource for everything from quick, weeknight suppers to huge, holiday feasts for family and friends.
Thanks for your consideration,
Christopher Kimball
Founder and Publisher
