How To Cook Lamb Leg: Subtleties And Useful Tips

Properly cooked lamb leg can become a real delicacy and decoration of any festive table.

Properly cooked lamb leg can become a real delicacy and decoration of any festive table. 

 

Lamb is not the most traditional and familiar dish for the inhabitants of central Russia. In the East, this type of meat is prepared mainly by men. It is believed that the matter is too responsible to be trusted by its ladies. The French are the same lamb lovers as the oriental people. For every holiday and on all special occasions they prepare a dish called Gigot. This is nothing more than a baked leg of lamb.

However, knowing the recipe and some cooking tricks, any hostess will be able to cook a leg of a ram so that everyone who tries the dish will be delighted.

Spices for cooking leg of lamb

 

If there is enough salt and pepper for chicken or pork, then only spices can turn a lamb dish into a culinary masterpiece. For a leg of lamb, the most suitable are the following:

bay leaf, thyme, pepper, mint, rosemary, basil, dill, thyme.

It is not necessary to use all of them, you can choose by sampling those that, in your opinion, make the finished dish the most fragrant and tasty. Almost all hostesses who have become adept at cooking lamb agree that rosemary is perhaps the ideal seasoning for this dish.

Marinate the leg of lamb

 

Before cooking, the meat must be marinated. A leg of lamb marinade made from olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice and spices with white wine is good. Some people prefer to marinate lamb with red wine, but this dish turns out to be sharper in taste. The proportions, as well as the amount of spices, are by eye.

Although this is not practiced in the East, among the culinary specialists of central Russia, a popular solution is to use bread kvass as the basis for the marinade.

The leg of a lamb is often cooked whole, so that the meat is well marinated, you need to make deep cuts along the bone with a knife. The younger the lamb, the faster the meat will marinate and, accordingly, the more tender it will be when cooked. It is ideal to use a leg of lamb, whose age is not more than a year. In dairy animals, the smell and characteristic taste of meat are absent.

If there is absolutely no time for pickling, then you should at least make deep cuts in the meat and stuff it with garlic and spices.

 

Lamb meat is a high-fat variety, therefore, regardless of the method of preparation, it is necessary to trim the fat from it. It is he who gives the finished dish an unpleasant smell and taste. True, it is not advisable to completely deprive meat of fat, otherwise the cooked leg will be dry and tough. You can, as an option, stuff it with pork fat.

Features of roasting lamb leg

Some bake the leg of lamb with the bone, while others remove it - this is a matter of taste and personal preference. In the oven, as a rule, lamb is cooked in foil or in a sleeve - then it will turn out more tender and juicy.

True, 7 minutes before readiness, you need to cut the sleeve or slightly open the foil - such a manipulation will allow the meat to brown and acquire a crispy, appetizing crust.

 

A feature of roasting a leg of lamb is that it is initially cooked at the maximum temperature, and 20 minutes before the end of cooking, the fire is reduced to a minimum. This secret allows cooked lamb to literally melt in your mouth.

Potatoes can also be baked with meat. To prepare the French dish Gigot, potatoes are boiled until half cooked, then fried in a mixture of vegetable and butter with pepper and a pinch of salt. 5-7 minutes before the meat is ready, the potatoes are laid out to it and both products are prepared together.