The Meatwave

Like many of us, I use holidays as an excuse to to forgo the usual watchful eye on the budget. That means top dollar meats like rib roast, tenderloin, and ham all become fair game. When it comes to Easter, there's always one pricey cut I choose above them all—leg of lamb. I noticed that it's pretty consistently been my choice year after year, and thought maybe I should change things up this time around, but as I considered my alternatives, I couldn't mask my true desire for that wonderful rich and tender leg of lamb. So I went for it again, but gave it a little twist from the usual by stuffing it was roasted garlic and mint pesto.

Mint and lamb are a match made in heaven. Separately they're both strong and can be overpowering if not used in the right way, but that's what makes them such good bedfellows. Mint was originally used with lamb to help tame its sometimes gamey flavor, which it does, but the lamb also tames the strong mint, making the two pair in a very pleasing balance.

Instead of using straight up mint, I put together a mint pesto that combined the herb along with almonds, garlic, lemon juice, feta, and extra-virgin olive oil to create a salty and bright sauce.

I thought the pesto alone may be a little too mellow to season an entire leg of lamb, which is how roasted garlic came into play. When roasted, garlic becomes a great concentration of garlic flavor that loses its raw sharp bite and gains a mellow sweetness. It took two whole heads—roasted for an hour in a 400°F oven—to cover the surfaces of half a leg of lamb.

Once the two stuffing components were prepped, I turned my attention to the main attraction—the lamb. Cooking for only two, I went with half a leg of lamb that I bought pre-butterflied. Rolled out in preparation for stuffing, I first gave the top side a heavy seasoning of salt and pepper.

Then the roasted garlic were squeezed from their wrappers and spread with a rubber spatula across the entire surface of the meat. A bed of mint pesto went down after that, adding a beautiful green contrast to the red meat.

The whole thing was then rolled and tied with butcher twine at one-inch intervals. After seasoning the outside equally as heavily as the inside, I let the roll rest as I prepared the grill.

While you can use the reverse-sear method for more evenness in final meat, I did the standard sear and roast here, utilizing a two-zone fire. While the fire was pipping hot, I seared the lamb over direct heat until well browned all over. It was then moved to the cool side of the grill, covered, and let cook until the center hit 130°F on an instant read thermometer. Carryover cooking brought the final temperature up the desired medium-rare temperature of 135°F.

I forgot to turn the roast during the cook, which is why there was some unevenness in my final product—you can see the left side is more rare than the right. That didn't have much effect on the end result though—the strong, yet fairly smooth, flavor of leg of lamb was front and center, just how I like it. Bits of caramelized roasted garlic were embedded in each bite, while the more mild mint pesto added a touch of freshness and saltiness. It ended up being a worthy holiday roast, and another good recipe to have in my growing collection of Easter leg of lambs.

Published on Tue Apr 15, 2014 by Joshua Bousel

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