Leg of lamb - traditional-style

[teebob2000]

Hi all - boneless leg of lamb part deux!  Once again a Costco special.

I doing things a little different from my Indian-style boneless leg.  I'm sticking with a more Greek-like lamb.  Opened it up, well-oiled, sprinkled inside and out with Penzey's lamb seasoning, with Turkish oregano, rosemary, cumin, celery, sweet paprika, black pepper, onion, garlic, spearmint and ginger.  Then into the fridge for 8 hours.

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• teebob2000
• Mar 31, 2013

Once again I put garlic cloves inside, but this time I halved them lengthwise and cut into the thicker parts of the leg and inserted the half cloves.  A little more olive oil inside and out...

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• teebob2000
• Mar 31, 2013

...and then tied up.

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• teebob2000
• Mar 31, 2013

I'm setting it on a small rack in the smoker and will smoke for 2 hours, after which I will cut the smoke and set the meat and rack in a pan to catch all that wonderful juice for the remainder of the cooking process and make a red wine Balsamic reduction gravy.  I plan to serve with some couscous and green peas on the side.

 

[fpnmf]

Looking good!!

  Craig

 

[teebob2000]

Looking good!!

  Craig

Thanks Craig!

 

[teebob2000]

OK finished product shown below...  sort of...  My daughter wouldn't let me pause to snap a pic before carving it after the rest.  Dinner was LATE!!!  There were hardly any pan drippings this time so no gravy, sadly.  But the meat was VERY moist!

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• teebob2000
• Mar 31, 2013

So it reached around 135F after 3 hours and change.  I say "around" because the internal temp variation within the single cut of boneless leg can be very wide.  For example, in mine, one half registered 141F with an instant-read while the other half was 133F.  So I took it out of the smoker at that point for a rest.  The advantage of this feature, of course, is that you can make a range of eaters happy.  I like my lamb rare/med rare, my wife likes it med rare/medium and my daughter like it medium.  I can get all the levels within the single piece!

I used only about a pound of smallish oak chunks for the 2 hours of smoking time so I went light on that.  It was really well-flavored between the seasonings and the smoke, nice balance.