- Hey everybody, I'm Chef
Tom with All Things Barbecue. And today we're making a
smoked crown roast of lamb. (splash and dripping) So the crown roast of lamb
is essentially two or more frenched racks of lamb just like this one. That are tied together
into the shape of a crown. The idea is that it's a
really nice presentation especially for big events like holidays. Around here, the way we
find these racks of lamb is typically already frenched. This is the way they come
in the big box stores, this is the easiest way
to get a hold of them. So this is what we're
gonna start with today because I think that's
what's most accessible for everybody out there. Now you can see these bones
are cleaned really nicely. But sometimes what you'll
find is that they haven't been cleaned up all that well and
you've still got some of this silver skin or tissue, fascia whatever it is that you
want to to get rid of. And that's really pretty easy. If you can avoid it, you
don't want to have to scrape the bone and you can
just peel it right off and that'll make things easier. In this cae, that's working out just fine. But this is just for presentation's sake because this, looks much better than this. Even after it's cooked, you'll be able to tell the difference. Alright, so that's how we want it to look. Now we're also gonna wanna
clean up some of this down here. This is some really tough silver skin. And this is gonna be the
portion that you bite into. I mean, you're gonna take
your bite right there. So you don't want to be
chewing on that silver skin. So right here I'm finding
some little bone fragments, I'm just gonna clean those up a little bit so nobody ends up chewing on them later. But on the backside here,
there's not much work to do. There is that skin on the back of the ribs like you'd get with pork ribs, but we're not gonna be
eating from this side. Like I said before, all
the meat is up front. So we don't need to worry about that. Alright, we got these cleaned up nicely. Now I want to get them into some marinade. Start to tenderize 'em and really get some good flavor on 'em. Now we're gonna do that
with the Smoke on Wheels barbecue marinade. Now I've mentioned this
before about this marinade but it's a really great savory marinade. Lots of herbs, some lemon, and garlic. So even though it's called
a barbecue marinade, I really think of it as
a savory dish marinade. Kinda work that into
the meat and we're gonna let this sit for about an hour. While we're waiting on the marinade, I'd like to throw together
a little potato dish. Now this has kinda become
our go to potato dish at All Things Barbecue. It's pretty simple, but really tasty. These are herb roasted smashed potatoes. It all starts with these baby potatoes. Now this is about two pounds of both white and purple potatoes. And so we're just gonna
doctor these up a little bit, add a little extra flavor to 'em. In this case, we've
got some fresh oregano, some fresh thyme, and then were gonna hit it with our Grunt Rub. Which gives us some nice
pepper and garlic flavors. I'm jus popping the leaves off the stems here with the oregano. We'll give this a mince and shoot for about two tablespoons
of minced oregano. So oregano is an herb
that's a bit more delicate than say like, thyme. So one of the things that I like to try and do when I'm mincing
a finer leaf like this is try and slide your knife through it rather than mashing it down. What that does is it allows the oil to stay inside the leaves. And the oil's what
gives us all that aroma. Now if I just mashed this down, you'll see that the leaves
start to turn a dark color. And that oil is leaking out. And these thyme leaves are small enough that we're just gonna strip
'em right into the skillet here with the potatoes. Don't need to chop those up. Just want to make sure not
to get any of that hard stem in there with the delicate leaves. And again, we'll go for
roughly two tablespoons. Alright, now I'm gonna hit all this with some good olive oil. Just enough to get it coated. And then we'll come in with our Grunt Rub. You guys know how potatoes
just love to soak up seasoning. They can take a lot of it
so you don't have to be shy. If this needs more salt in the end we'll make sure to taste
it before we serve it. Alright, now I wanna cover
this up, get it on the grill, start roasting at 400 degrees. Alright, we're gonna throw
these on the second shelf of our Yoder Smokers YS640 pellet grill. I'm runnin' hickory pellets today and we're at 400 to start these off. I suspect at 400 this is gonna
take 45 minutes to an hour. But we'll be back in about
30 minutes to check on 'em. And at some point we're gonna
drop that temperature down so that we can also be smoking
our lamb at the same time. We're gonna slice this lamb
into little lollipops to serve. And that meat is really
tender, it's really supple it's not fatty, but it
almost give you that feel because it's just so soft
when you bite into it. So what I want to do is find
something that can compliment and contrast that to really
bring the dish together. So in this case what we're
gonna do is take some citrus and some fresh herbs as
well as some olive oil, blend it all together into an
emulsion and it's gonna create this bright green beautiful sauce. That's gonna go great
not only with the lamb, but also on top of the potatoes. For our fresh herbs here,
we've some Italian parsley, cilantro, baby dill, and oregano. I'm gonna get this minced up
and into the food processor. I've been given the
Wusthof Epicure Santoku a test run lately, just
seeing how I like it. It's just perfect for
this kind of work I think and I really have enjoyed it. Makes pretty easy work of the herbs. We're gonna get this down to about a half cup of minced parsley. And we're gonna shoot for a half cup of the cilantro as well. Especially when you're making
a sauce out of these fresh herbs don't be afraid to get some of those cilantro stems in there. There's tons of flavor in there and you're gonna puree it down anyway, so it's really fine if
you've got some stems. Alright, that's maybe a little much. Again, half a cup. Now for the dill and oregano, we're gonna go for about half
as much, maybe a quarter cup. Alright, just a rough chop on those. In addition to our fresh
herbs, we're also gonna get some garlic in there and
we'll just slice this up. I'll let the food processor
do the heavy lifting. And before I get to the
citrus, I'm gonna add a couple tablespoons of fresh ground cumin and a couple tablespoons
of wildflower honey, just to kind of sweeten things up. Want about a quarter cup each
of lime juice and lemon juice. Alright, now I'm just gonna
puree this into a fine paste. Just scrape down the sides a little bit. Oh, incredibly aromatic. And of course, that cumin
pops out right away. Smells fantastic. Alright that is looking pretty good. All that's left to incorporate
now is the olive oil. So I'm gonna transfer our
herb paste to a mixing bowl. Scale out one cup of our EVOO. And I'm slowly gonna start
whisking in a little bit of oil. Now what I'm looking to do
is get this so that the oil and the paste aren't separated. And I think just to finish
this off, I better throw it back into the food processor. And I'm gonna give it just a shake of smoked salt at the same time. And you see how that really
brightened up the color. Mm, that's very bright. Citrus pops out, the cumin pops out. The fat kind of coats
your mouth which allows that flavor to carry all the way around. I think it needs just a shake of salt but beyond that, this is gonna be good. So what I'm gonna do now is
throw this into the refrigerator until we're ready to
serve it with the lamb. You guys know how I love
to do a reverse sear. But when it comes to the crown roast, once this thing is assembled, there's no way for us
to sear it at the end. The way this thing's assembled,
the bones are facing out, we can't get to that meat. So, instead what we're gonna do is put this sear on at the beginning. So that way we still get that flavor from the maillard reaction, that nice sear on the outside, the browning. And then we still get
this flavor from the smoke as it soaks up the smoke at a lower temperature after the fact. Been about a hour so we're gonna get these out of the marinade. I'm just taking some of
that excess marinade off as I pull it out. However, we'll leave a little
bit behind to kinda help bind the rub to the meat. And we're gonna season this with the Cattlemen's Grill
Steakhouse seasoning. This is kind of a
southwest steak seasoning which is great for lamb. So this will work really nice with the oregano and the
cilantro and the sauce. That oregano and the potatoes. Course the cumin that we
have in that sauce as well. And you can see that I'm
just hitting the actual meat. You don't really need to pay attention to the bone side so much. And of course everything
that's under that fat, we're not really eating that anyway, there's just bone underneath there. Alright, so let's give this
just a minute to set up here. You wanna get a cast iron
skillet just smokin' hot and then some oil that can
handle a high amount of heat. So like a grapeseed oil, avocado oil, something with a high smoke point. This is just gonna prevent any sticking. (sizzling) And it's instantly aromatic
because that heat is working against that rub, just
to wake everything up. Smells amazing already. So already forming a crust on there. Beautiful. Alright, let's flip that over. Alright, I'm gonna get these outta here. Okay I've got that sear
on them that I want so now we can assemble the crown roast. Alright we're gonna start this off by tying two of the end bones together. Right down here at the bottom. And then we're gonna
bring everything around and tie these bones together as well. Now from here what we
wanna do is run a string around the bottom of the bones here. That's really gonna help
to form that crown shape. And I'm trying to work this just right under this lip where the bones are. And then we'll pull it tight. And then what we can do
to kind of get this thing to sit more round rather
than football shaped, we'll take these double
bones that are tied together and pull them together a little bit here. Now there are a number of ways that you can tie a crown roast. I know of a certain method that requires you to use a needle. Where you actually go behind
the bone, through the meat on both ends and then tie it up. Which is also a great method
but for those of you that don't have those tools at
home, this is the simplest way to get the same end result. Oh yeah, that's smelling nice. Gonna check on these for doneness. Oh, they're getting pretty soft. That's good. So what I'm gonna do now
is turn this cooker down to smoking temperatures. We'll leave this covered for now. Alright, we made it down to
smoking temperatures now. So we're gonna place
our crown roast on here. It's a little bit too tall
to go on the second shelf so we'll put it on the main cooking grate. And this shouldn't take terribly long. Maybe about 45 minutes. I'll be back in half an hour just to check and see where that
internal temperature is. 125 internal temperature
is the perfect time time to pull this off of here. You can see we've got the
potatoes back on here warming up just a little bit so we can mash those up to finish this whole thing off. So you can see how tender these are, but they're not steaming
hot so what we're gonna do is continue to warm them up and melt our butter in
here at the same time. Now in the next five minutes
while this roast is resting, this is gonna be ready to go. Alright, so we're just gonna give these kind of a rustic smash here. We're not gonna try and
get pureed or anything. We'll leave some texture. But we want to get these mashed up enough to really soak up that butter. And of course visually the purple potatoes really interesting in there. Woo, that's warm. Now I'm almost certain we're
gonna need some salt in here but let's go ahead and have a taste. Really great flavor from that Grunt Rub. But we are gonna add a little
bit of smoked salt to this. Now those potatoes are ready to go. Throw the lid back on
so they can stay warm. At this point I want to
get into that rack of lamb. Let's cut into the crown
roast and we'll show you what we're finishing up with. Now we don't need that anymore. Now what's great about
this is you can actually slice this right at the table. And it just looks really cool. Check that out. Nice and pink right there at the top. But 125, nice medium rare. That's exactly where
we want our lamb to be. So we'll do a little base
layer of potatoes here. Top that off with the lamb, and then a drizzle of
our fresh herb sauce. Bright, beautiful, tangy, looks incredible. Oh man. So tender. Just perfectly cooked. The cumin jumps out to
me and it compliments that slight gaminess of
the lamb really well. And then it's really like tangy. Which is great like I talked about the suppleness of the meat. That tang really cuts through it. It's a perfect compliment in my opinion. I hope you guys will give this one a try. Let me know what you think about it. Hey, thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed the video,
please hit the subscribe button. And as always, a good
deal of these products you see featured in the
video from the seasonings, the rubs, the grill, and
even some of those tools are available for purchase at atbbq.com If you have any questions
or comments about the cook, please let me know in the
comment section down below. For more recipes, tips and techniques, head over to thesauce.atbbq.com All Things Barbecue Where barbecue legends are made.
