How to Carve a Leg of Lamb

hi there I'm chef Eric Crowley owner of the culinary classroom in West Los Angeles and today I'm going to show you how to carve a leg of lamb this happens to be a roasted leg of lamb done completely in the oven regardless of your cooking method for a leg of lamb you may see some that tell you to take the leg of lamb and brown it in a saute pan and then roast it in the oven others on a grilling technique would be to grill it over some coals and then move it over an indirect heat as we call it in barbecue parlance and then completely cook it on top of the grill any of those cooking techniques or any others the same kind of carving technique will apply really important after the leg of lamb comes out of the oven or the grill or however you're cooking it you let it rest for at least thirty minutes and let it cool off a little bit if you start to carve it right away the meat is still so hot and there's so much liquid inside with the meat that is well over the boiling point that when you start to cut it the juices are just going to flow out all over the place and your meats going to be dry so by letting it cool off and letting it rest the juices are going to redistribute throughout the meat and when you start to carve it you're not going to get nearly as much seepage or bleeding so this has rested for about half an hour great thing about working with the leg of lamb is that typically the shank or the end piece of the leg is kept bare this is often called frenched as well and when it's cool after about 30 minutes this makes a really wonderful handle to use I like to start off at the thicker hip part of the leg there is going to be a layer of skin and a little bit of fat underneath it but the majority of the meat is on the top here and then we can turn the bone over and we can cut on to the other side I like to use a nice long slicing knife you could even use an electric knife if you have one of those you may find even a chef's knife will do too but I find that a more narrow blade is going to be a little bit easier to work with because if you have a big wide blade like on a chef's knife you're going to have a lot of surface area on the knife that's going to cause the meat to stick to it so I'm going to hold the leg up by about a 45 degree angle and I'm going to start to into the skin and into the meat I'm going to cut down until I feel the leg bone about right there maybe even rotate it a little bit cut in over here and I'm going to move over about half an inch [Music] make another cut until I feel then I fit the bone and we're going to move our way up the shank don't worry about that crust that's coming off we're just going to put it back on after we serve it after we make you can actually make as many slices as you want to serve and then you can keep the rest of it onto the leg itself after I have let's see I have four slices here I'm going to take my knife I'm actually going to start to tilt it and rotate it to get that knife running parallel to the leg bone so if I laid the leg of lamb down here I'm actually going to have the knife parallel to my cutting board and I can feel the knife blade running right on top of that bone and I'm going to carefully saw the knife towards the end of the leg over here and as the pieces come on out you can go ahead and arrange them onto the platter this one I'm going to come back and cut towards me one more piece right here this way and if you have guests that are looking for meat that's a little bit more well done than the ends this end right here and also the end up towards the shank is going to be more done and finish cutting up all the way up the leg going to rotate the bone around a little bit more to so I can get bigger slights this time I'm going to come in this way go a little bit of a bone right there and then right up at the very shank I'm going to start up at the top and cut along the bone to lift the knife up right here there's a little bit of a joint cut down here and we can also as I mentioned before we can turn the meat around I want to get this a little bit right off at the end here stand the bone up now there we go cut that guy down just like that set that one right there and we have a nice naba meat right here that we could easily get to by standing the leg up cut right along here swing them around do the same thing on the other side you can see right here this is actually where the knee joint is the bone is going to start to basically flex and if you're more comfortable holding it closer to that joint go right ahead and then here you can see I have some cuts that were from my previous initial cuts gather up our little bit of herb crust sprinkle that around [Music] and you can see the underside definitely on the well-done for those that like it like that we are keep the bone inside the kitchen could easily turn around and put it into a pot and simmer it make some soup out of it there definitely is a little bit more meat that you can go ahead and it can carve off a little bit later on and that is how to carve a leg of lamb thanks again for watching be sure to subscribe so you can get some additional information if there's a recipe that you would like to see me make feel free to send an email to requests at Mahalo com thanks again and I'll see you soon [Music] [Music]

Channel: mahalodotcom

Views: 219,130

Rating: 3.9946525 out of 5

Keywords: Carve, Lamb, Baking, Cooking, Mahalodotcom, Mahalobaking, Mahalohowto, Homemade, Instruction, Recipe, Chef Eric Crowley

Id: LrjLz0F292E

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2011