Smoked Leg of Lamb & a Gyro with Homemade Tzatziki Sauce

hey I'm Matt with meat Church let's fire up the pit and smoke some lamb [Music] well we're smack dab in the middle of our annual hardcore barbecue series which is a really popular playlist that we have on our YouTube channel starting 2021 and then carried it over in 2022. I think we have like 17 episodes this is episode number two of 2023. last week was Bourbon Barrel ribs but now we're jumping into lamb this is another recipe that you guys have been asking for for a long time I cook just a little bit of lamb as far as like as the world goes it's one of the most popular proteins in the world to cook it's just not as popular in the US certainly popular around Easter and if you can get good land it's great and rarely what made me want to make this was I hosted a barbecue festival at ATT stadium called q barbecue fest and pig Beach came from New York and they served a Euro with lamb with a white sauce or tzatziki sauce that was amazing and I loved it and so it's been in my head to kind of do something like that for a long time and we thought let's just drop it right in the middle of Hardcore barbecue so what do we have here today is a four and three quarters pound leg of lamb that we picked up at Costco business in Dallas really affordable it's 5.99 a pound so this was like 28 bucks but the past two times I've been there it's like six dollars off so it's just over 20 bucks and we're going to be very simple with this I'm gonna prepare it in what I call kind of a Greek style just hit it with a couple seasonings and bonus we're gonna make a tzatziki sauce that I think is really good and ultimately we're gonna serve it in a euro because that's just a way that I like it but extremely minimal preparation and cooking so let's just jump right into it so when it comes to kind of the anatomy and what you want to do this there's a whole lot of options a lot of people get into should I how much fat do I trim off do I trim silver skin or not all I'm going to do today is take off the hard fat and on this one really it's kind of just like right here it doesn't need a whole heck of a lot this is New Zealand lamb I've actually cooked this recently and I'm not getting into removing silver skin because I don't think it needs it now silver skin does not render down if you want to take it off you can and I'm gonna I'm gonna talk while I start to take my flexible boning knife here and just kind of trim away this fat so if you like to cook wild game or say someone in your family thinks that something is too gamey that is often from the silver skin or the fascia in between the muscles so depending what you're cooking always a choice of yours if you want to remove it or not I think it is critical to remove it uh in Wild game to to reduce that taste because otherwise you see a lot of people marinating and doing all this crazy stuff and I want the natural flavor of the meat to come through personally but if you guys have if you're new here or if you you know haven't followed us for very long you'll know that I say my recipes and methods are just a guideline I'm going to show you a way that I know will be great and you'll like it but it's not the end-all be-all it's just something that I like and something that works so you guys make it your own use your own flavor profiles and cook how you want I always say in my barbecue schools there's a lot of different ways of skin a cat and it's not trying to be cliche there are 400 different ways to cook a brisket as long as you're happy with the end result that's that's all that matters so you do you all right there's really not any more hard fat on this that's one reason there's a little bit right here actually I lied one reason I love buying these from Costco is it's very very simple this this comes together real quickly our total cook time is going to be around six hours so this is something that I can easily get done um we're going to cook on an Offset Smoker today but if you want to do this on a pellet grill you could put this on in the morning at a low enough temperature to let it ride throughout the day and do your final steps in the evening when you get home from work and it could be supper so it's it's a really good option we're going to hit we're going to start with a binder at first I'm just going to use a little olive oil binders to me are a way for seasoning to adhere to the meat and also stay adhered during the cook process but they are optional this is a neutral cooking oil so this isn't going to affect the flavor profile it's literally helping the rub stick on and stay on of course I'm gonna find some more stuff I want to take off okay so let's talk about seasoning my holy cow beef rub um technically beef rub it on Wild game love it on lamb it's primarily salt and pepper a little bit of garlic so it's a great flavor profile for this but I'm going to come in with our garlic and our one of my favorite seasonings so the herbs that are in it the big herbs and you can read on the bottle here there's basil thyme oregano um there's no Rosemary so I've actually chopped up some Rosemary because that's a flavor that I like personally on lamb so what I've done here is just minced up fresh Rosemary and I'm going to put this on here first when I'm seasoning if I'm when I'm layering seasonings layering meaning using multiple I like to put the bigger stuff on first and it sounds weird but that's just so that it doesn't bounce off so if you've got another seasoning on here you know I want this I want this to stick so I put the bigger stuff on first but that's just kind of a personal thing that I do all right now I'm gonna go with my holy cow and this is what I'm going to use primarily so this is really the main I would say the main layer so to speak this is an SPG I put the smallest amount ever of paprika oil in it to give it a red color because it's just a just a color that I think works in barbecue and outdoor cooking so if you know me Church you definitely know holy cow it's been our number one rub since day one now I'm going to hit it with the garlic and herb and this is a delicate seasoning so you could put a lot on it so I'm not sure how this is going to come across on camera but I don't want you guys to think that I'm just absolutely hammering this with it but when it comes to lamb I like the look of the kind of studded look of all this Rosemary on here and in this garlic and herb so I like to let my seasonings adhere for at least 15 minutes preferably an hour and I usually say with big cuts if you want to do this the night before and get the prep out of the way then put this in a pan cover with foil put it in your fridge and then cook it the next day so I'm gonna go get some stuff done while this adheres 15-20 minutes and then we'll start cooking all right the seasoning is adhered so let's head over to the pit So today we're cooking on a mill scale offset with post soak running 250 degrees I call it the universal smoking temperature but I've been saying this a lot lately you can replicate my recipes and methods on any type of cooker that you have whether it be a pellet grill kamado grill whatever you choose so rocking our meal scale today I love this I consider it an heirloom product it's pretty cool because I think my kids will cook on it one day but let's talk about what we're going to do so if you were cooking lamb chops you would treat it more like a steak as far as the end internal temperature so USDA says 145 if you want it more rare uh you know like medium rare and closer to 130 but in this case I mentioned we're going to cook this as a Euro so we're going to pull this lamb at the end so what I'm going to do is I'm going to smoke it until it's about 165 and then we're going to put it in a pan wrap it and cook it until it's just over 200 or it's tender so a lot like pulled pork so it's super duper easy and honestly incredibly hard to screw up and it's going to be delicious in we go my setup is uh is very straightforward I've got a log here as a fire blocker that I get asked that all the time that's just to keep the direct heat from blasting it I'm going to put my bigger end of the leg towards the fire close it down I'm not going to do anything I'm not going to Spritz it if you wanted to add layers of flavor you could Spritz throughout the process this is going to take about four hours at 250 to get to 165 so I'll seal back then all right our lamb is rocking right along the mil scales per in 250 degrees right on the dots so while it's cooking let's make a tzatziki sauce so this is something I made a few days ago that's been sitting in my fridge it's awesome it's super easy the recipe is always down in the description and everything we do is always on meetchurch.com all right so we've got two cups of plain Greek yogurt okay we've got one cucumber I like to take about half of the skin off of it and then it's just diced up finely from there this is the zest of two lemons we've got two garlic cloves minced up two tablespoons of Dill fresh dill you know use fresh anytime you can especially in this sorry that's mint I should know my herbs better four tablespoons of Dill I could smell it as soon as I picked it up and then we need the juice of two lemons it's like child's play with the Montana knives all right squeeze them in all right mix it all together by the way shout out to my friends at thermoworks they keep me in the silicone stuff so not only do I love thermal works for instant reads but I love all their their silicone tools as well use it in all my kitchens I actually love their little trivets that we use as little hot pads so all you gotta do here is just mix this up and then when we're done mixing it we're gonna add a little your salt and pepper to taste but you all know me anytime it's salt and pepper to taste I holy cow the taste I don't know it's probably a table yeah probably not probably not a tablespoon a little less so we mix it up all we're going to do test it make sure we like it and we're gonna go put it in the fridge I like when this is in the fridge in advance so it can really come together and those flavors meld it's nice that way you know if you're in a pinch and don't have the time just make it when you start cooking the lamb and it's still going to be delicious I don't even need to test it I know that was the perfect amount of holy cow it looks beautiful so off to the fridge I go and we'll be back to check on the lamb in just a little bit well the land's been smoking right at about four hours I've checked it and it looks great so let's bring it out beautiful man that looks good gorgeous color smells awesome uh using my instant read I just tempt it right before we uh we came back in it's 165 degrees but always go visual cues first you know I'm looking for you know just a great color I don't know if you'd want to call it bark or not in this case but it looks and smells awesome so let's talk about how we're going to finish this out how we're going to get it to a state where it's pullable so a while back my friends at Traeger had Mayhem Lauren come down to my house we didn't know each other at the time and he made lamb and he went to Rapid which is what I'm about to do didn't put any liquid in the pan and just put some some garlic cloves in it and lamb is so fatty that you'll see when we wrap this and put it back in the pit same tent it's going to kick out so much you it's kind of crazy to be honest with you so this is very very simple fits in a half pan with complete ease and then what we're going to do is I'm going to put eight or ten garlic cloves in here I'm not putting any liquid if you want to put a braising liquid you certainly could but in a lot of my methods I show you the Simplicity of things like how easy is this and if you want to kick it up and do other things knock yourself out we'll wrap this up tight we're going back in the pit at 250 degrees and I can tell you from experience this is going to take about about two hours to get from 165 to 200 but we're going to be using our instant read along the way we're going to be probing this in the thick part of the leg and when we break 200 you're probably going to feel very little resistance so somewhere 200 205 degrees it's going to be ready to pull it off foreign a couple hours and the lamb is done I'm a little thermoworks trivet oil is all nice and got a tan God it smells awesome well I guess that lamb gave up good Lord that's that's crazy it just it's like snapped in half too funny all right well let's start to pull this off here man look at that it's obviously very hot I'm trying it anyway oh that's good really really good I'm just going to take two forks I'm not resting it I'm just going to go ahead and just start to kind of pull this apart you can see it has like tremendous amount of tremendous amount of smoke in it just gonna come right apart here obviously going to pull this bone out our bones I should say here and a little cartilage that you got in here set that aside nice and clean and then don't sleep on that garlic it's been there for a couple hours as that liquid came out as Mayhem said this garlic is just going to end up becoming one with this lamb so if you like garlic be sure to be sure to add it in there like we did man just comes right apart super tender smells awesome by the way so I'm gonna sit here and use my hands use these Forks whatever you prefer to kind of pull your meat completely incorporate it and then I'm gonna go get the Tzatziki from the fridge and some fresh pitas and I'm pretty dang excited about this lunch honestly I'm really excited about this I love myself a Euro so I know this is going to be really really good let's start out with fresh pita clearly the only Pita that we support here at meat Church all right lamb gotta go big I'm hungry this may be the star of the show by the way this Tzatziki is money kind of do what you want you know I'm gonna go Little Cucumber I know there's some in the Tzatziki go a little bit more gonna go a little bit of tomato [Music] a little bit of red onion no I'm a cheese guy I'm telling you I've determined through this business cheese is one of the most polarizing things you could talk about don't ever put American cheese in a video by the way top with a little bit of Dill y'all think golly that's a dinner right there bam love it I'm going in damn I'm kind of mad at it mad that it took me so long to make this damn video that is super good dang that's good I'll have to make this if we dropped some bangers lately and I would say that's one of them well check out our hardcore barbecue series everything from baby back ribs Texas style ribs beef ribs smoked meatloaf Whole Hog brisket brisket on a pellet grill chicken with Alabama white sauce all the classics are in the playlist you guys check that out like And subscribe your subscriptions help us keep bringing you these free videos and don't forget to stick around for the wrap up that we do at the end I'll shoot this wrap up next week when I've had time to reflect on this feed it to Mrs Matrix see what she says and give you just some honest thoughts later see y'all next time [Music] welcome to the wrap up it's been a week since we shot this video and I would tell you that easily my number one takeaway was it was delicious everyone loved it my team back at meat Church barbecue supply loved it so really glad we finally put this out here euro is one of my favorite things to eat so I know that you guys are gonna love this one you know think the only thing I noticed I didn't say in the video I think it's obvious the cheese was feta I went on my polarizing cheesecake and didn't mention what type of cheese it was but I'm a feta cheese lover I'll leave you with one thing everyone's been asking about when is the meat Church Spring merch drop and it is going to be this weekend so stay tuned to meetchurch.com make sure you subscribe to our newsletter because that's always where we drop all the info before things go live so that's kind of the 4-1-1 that y'all are looking for thanks for being here and thanks for subscribing and we'll see y'all next week yeah foreign [Music]

Channel: Meat Church BBQ

Views: 198,360

Keywords: leg of lamb, leg of lamb recipe, roast leg of lamb, how to cook a leg of lamb, lamb, easter leg of lamb, lamb recipe, gyros, gyro recipe, smoked lamb, smoked lamb leg, how to smoke lamb, smoked leg of lamb, how to cook lamb, pulled lamb, pita, gyro, meat church, matt pittman, traeger, bbq, barbecue, grilling, meat church bbq, meat church bbq youtube, Meat Church BBQ YouTube, Meat Church, Matt Pittman, BBQ, Barbecue, Grilling, how to, how to make, cooking, cooking show, traeger lamb

Id: LCXGE53Zysc

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2023