Hi guys, Jamie here. I'm going to show you how to
make the perfect roast leg of lamb. Let me talk about preparing, roasting, resting and carving. I
want you to prepare it so it's going to guarantee juiciness and flavour, and celebration, but look
this is a leg of lamb. It's a beautiful thing, this is a 2.4 kilo leg of lamb. There's many ways
that you can flavour this, to your own preference, let me give you an old-school reliable kind
of preference that I love. It's using garlic, rosemary which is so classic with many many
meats, and then divisive anchovy. A lot of people say they don't like anchovy, because you
might have rubbish ones on a pizza it's like ew, right. But anchovies you know a little bit,
will dissolve, you will not taste anchovy, it's a seasoning. How do we get this, into that
okay, and the way we're simply going to do that is by taking a small knife, and just stabbing it
evenly down to the bone, and then sticking your finger in, okay. So we'll do that evenly about
sort of two and a half inches apart, a little olive oil just a little bit just to get the fat
story going, we'll hit it up with salt and pepper, and we'll rub that all over the lamb. So that's
basic seasoning happening right, then garlic, you want it to be elegant and delicate. Pull off the
rosemary and then the divisive anchovy. Just run the knife down the length and then in half. Grab
yourself a little bit of garlic and the rosemary, and the anchovy, then we stick it in there
like that, it's going to be a beautiful thing. Just get it in there, that can go in our tray
right, and we're going to do a trivet. The trivet is to catch the juices from the roasting joint of
meat, and give you the potential to make the best gravy ever. What you're going to do is, have one
or two chunky bits of carrot, get that in there, a couple of little stalks of celery, clanks of
that just going in like that. A couple of onions, you can put a bit of extra herb in there
if you want. So a little kind of you know, let's call it a glass of water goes in, and this
will catch the juices from the lamb. Now let's talk about how we roast the lamb first of all. If
you're going to roast that, do not take it from the fridge to the oven, you know. It's going
to stress, it's going to make it tough, right take this out of the fridge at least one
or two hours before. This looks amazing, but what I want to do is give you a tip
that I always use, for my normal standard home oven. I've got it preheated to 220 degrees
celsius which is nice and hot, and I'm going to do two things that I think change the game. First
up, I'm going to put this beautiful leg of lamb directly onto the bars of the oven, right at
the top, okay. Then this tray goes underneath, so what's gonna happen is you're gonna
get 360 degree roasting around that lamb, as the fat melts here, it's going to go all the
way down underneath, then drip into the tray. So I think you're going to get a much better
cook right, it's going to be a better roast. Secondly, as soon as that oven is closed,
I'm going to turn the temperature down to 180 degrees celsius. So it gets that immediate
heat, and then it just, nice consistent 180 degrees celsius, which is 350 fahrenheight.
and you'll roast that lamb beautifully. So here in front of us we've got three legs of
lamb, now this has had an hour and ten minutes okay, and it had an internal temperature of
about 63 degrees celsius. That's going to give you roughly medium rare, yu know a little bit more
pink. Here is what I would call medium or blushing okay. So that's a nice way to cook it, because
you know if some people want it more well done, you can take it from the two ends. In the
inside here it's just nice and blushing and gorgeous and juicy, and then over here we've
got well done. So that's two hours 10 minutes, internal temperature 83 degrees celsius. There's
a lot of cultures that really embrace this, and actually different things happen right when
you cook it like this. So let's get in there, you want a nice carving knife, so a longer knife
that's sharp. So long kind of carving movements through the lamb like that. The outside cut here
will always be a little bit more well cooked, pretty quickly you can see it getting blushing,
and we've got colour going in there. By the way guys, I haven't told you, we've got to let these
legs of lamb rest for at least half an hour, why? Because it allows the heat to carry
on penetrating the leg of lamb. So when you take this out of the oven in
the middle, the heat will be going up. Then the middle one it's only had 10 more minutes
and that'll just take some of that blush away, this you know, it's really nice to cook it this
long, you get different deeper flavours. You get more gnarliness from the skin and the fat. What's
interesting is it's a completely different product right, so it is cooked through, but it's still
actually juicy. I love all of these and I'll find myself in summer, with the kind of pink cooked
lamb, you know asparagus, peas, spinach, and then this I love doing this when there's kind of more
fennel, seeds, coriander seeds, thyme, garlic, you know. Little spice rubs, getting in there.
So there you go guys, that's how to prep, flavour, and roast a beautiful leg of lamb, it's
extraordinary. If you want loads of ideas for that and the gravy, head over to JamieOliver.com I think you're going to love it, check it out.
