I don't claim to know anything about cooking. As a matter of fact I would consider myself uneducated in the art of culinary skills. The main reason for this is because I take absolute no interest in it. Probably because I'm not very good at it. Vicious circle, really. But I will get excited and want to share when I discover something new, find a good tip, or come across a really good recipe that turns out well, particularly under the uncultivated ministration of yours truly.
For Thanksgiving we have turkey, Christmas it's ham and for Easter I wanted something different. One Christmas Eve we treated ourselves and had dinner at a very swank upper class restaurant in a resort near our home. We ordered lamb and couldn't get over the tender delicious meat. So for this Easter we thought we'd give it a try. Now I've attempted lamb once before since that Christmas Eve and it turned out dry and tasteless. Now as I said, I don't know much, but I do know in order to produce a tender meat you must cook it very slow at low heat. So I pulled out the crockpot.
My hubby worried about my choice of cookware, but I assured him this was the route to go. His biggest concern was flavour. Where would it come from? When roasting a meat, the flavour obviously comes from absorbing the seasoning you administer to the surface. In the crockpot it absorbs it from a broth or it's own juices. And as we discovered in our first attempt at cooking lamb, it doesn't have much flavour. That left us with concocting up a broth. So I hit the internet. And found just what I was looking for.
For Thanksgiving we have turkey, Christmas it's ham and for Easter I wanted something different. One Christmas Eve we treated ourselves and had dinner at a very swank upper class restaurant in a resort near our home. We ordered lamb and couldn't get over the tender delicious meat. So for this Easter we thought we'd give it a try. Now I've attempted lamb once before since that Christmas Eve and it turned out dry and tasteless. Now as I said, I don't know much, but I do know in order to produce a tender meat you must cook it very slow at low heat. So I pulled out the crockpot.
My hubby worried about my choice of cookware, but I assured him this was the route to go. His biggest concern was flavour. Where would it come from? When roasting a meat, the flavour obviously comes from absorbing the seasoning you administer to the surface. In the crockpot it absorbs it from a broth or it's own juices. And as we discovered in our first attempt at cooking lamb, it doesn't have much flavour. That left us with concocting up a broth. So I hit the internet. And found just what I was looking for.
I thought it was pretty straight forward until I realized I really didn't know anything about cooking. Or cooking terms. For instance the "zest of a lemon" is the outer yellow part of the lemon. And when referring to garlic cloves, they mean the small individual pieces inside the garlic, not the entire head of garlic. Really, I was that niave. I must have been because when I excitedly went to inform my hubby of my new found knowledge, he looked at me oddly as he already knew those terms and what they stood for. Oh well.
I guess I learned something knew. And did you know that Rosemary is the best kept seasoning secret of all time? Oye! Just scrumptious. Can't believe I've never used it before. So anyhow, the above photo shows my seasoned leg of lamb sitting in my crockpot. I asked my butcher, aka hubby, to cut off some of the shank so that it would sit flat in the pan but he went off to work forgetting to do so. Again, I'm about to reveal something of myself that is pretty embarrassing. I've been a butcher's wife for nearly 24 years and I still can't tell my meat cuts apart. Or my knives. He keeps a special set of butcher knives locked away and when I pulled them out and looked at all the blades, I didn't have a clue which knife was which. Guessing the largest, meanest one was the meat boning knife, I began to hack away at my leg of lamb.
I guess I learned something knew. And did you know that Rosemary is the best kept seasoning secret of all time? Oye! Just scrumptious. Can't believe I've never used it before. So anyhow, the above photo shows my seasoned leg of lamb sitting in my crockpot. I asked my butcher, aka hubby, to cut off some of the shank so that it would sit flat in the pan but he went off to work forgetting to do so. Again, I'm about to reveal something of myself that is pretty embarrassing. I've been a butcher's wife for nearly 24 years and I still can't tell my meat cuts apart. Or my knives. He keeps a special set of butcher knives locked away and when I pulled them out and looked at all the blades, I didn't have a clue which knife was which. Guessing the largest, meanest one was the meat boning knife, I began to hack away at my leg of lamb.
It wasn't pretty. Shards of bone flew everywhere. (And, by the way, if you haven't already figured it out, here's another term for you...the boning knife does not cut thru bone it removes the meat from the bone. The knife above is called the cleaver and is the you want to cut thru bone...which is the knife I grabbed. I just gave it the wrong name.) Anyway, I cut off enough bone so that the lamb rested on an angle and not flattly in the pot. Which might have been a good thing, or else all my wonderful seasoning would have washed away in the broth below. And it was wonderful. The seasoning that is. The lamb came out of the crockpot eight hours later, tender and oh so yummy. It was a hit with the family. Here is the finished product.
And for those who are interested, here is the recipe. There are many different ways of cooking leg of lamb on the internet and probably far better and more sophisticated ways than mine, but I thought this was pretty simple and straightforward.
Leg of Lamb
1 leg of lamb
1 lemon
4-5 garlic cloves
1 Tbsp chopped rosemary
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
Wine, chicken or beef broth, tomato juice or water
Grate about half the zest off your lemon and mix with the rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper. Rub this mixture all over your lamb. Let it sit to marinade. (I let sit all night.) After marinading, place in crockpot with half can of broth, wine, tomato juice or water. Squeeze lemon juice over lamb. Cover and cook for 6-8 hours.
Leg of Lamb
1 leg of lamb
1 lemon
4-5 garlic cloves
1 Tbsp chopped rosemary
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
Wine, chicken or beef broth, tomato juice or water
Grate about half the zest off your lemon and mix with the rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper. Rub this mixture all over your lamb. Let it sit to marinade. (I let sit all night.) After marinading, place in crockpot with half can of broth, wine, tomato juice or water. Squeeze lemon juice over lamb. Cover and cook for 6-8 hours.