Christmas and New Year are approaching. Since my wife likes lamb, we splurged and got a large bone-in (or as they described it, “minimally boned and halal”) leg of lamb from Whole Foods. Clearly this is too much meat for us but we figured once it is cooked we can eat it in several sittings and use it to make other dishes such as lamb stew. I thought about making a special dry rub for it but decided to go with the natural flavor of the meat and used only olive oil, salt and pepper. We hot smoked it using mesquite wood chips in the Weber grill. I soaked the wood chips and added them directly on the hot coals which were separated on either side of the center in a metal baskets so the lamb roasted on indirect heat. I maintained the temperature at 400F. The lamb was done in almost one and half hours cooking time. I set the meat temperature probe in the middle of the thigh fairly deep but not touching the bone and cooked it to an internal temperature of 140F. The meat came out really nice (#1). We let it rest covered loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil for 30 minutes while we cooked some Japanese sweet potatoes to go with it.
The doneness ranged from well-done (close to the shank) to medium rare (middle of the thigh meat). Close to the boned (or de-boned) end (the largest diameter potion) was medium which I served (#2). I made a quick pan sauce and served it with mashed sweet potato.
This was a simple meat-and-potato affair but very satisfying. We had a Joseph Phelps 2022 Syrah.
This is a very good American Syrah that went perfectly with our lamb dinner.
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