- [Leah] Today, we are going to teach you how to make this tender,
juicy lamb shoulder. (upbeat hip hop music) - Hey, welcome back! This is Al from Eat More Vegans. - And I'm Leah from Eat More Vegans. - And, today, as we always do, we're going to cook and eat a vegan. But not a vegan person, right? - No. - What kind of vegan are
we going to cook today? - Today we're going to cook a lamb. - Today we are going to cook lamb. We're going to cook a lamb shoulder. Now, normally I am a big
believer in buying local, but this is about the opposite of local, if you live in Brooklyn. This is a lamb from New Zealand. It's going to be delicious. Some of the best lamb in the world comes out of New Zealand. And today we're going to experience that. So, our plan is we're going to open this up, we're going to put a
little bit of salt on it. Let it brine for just a
little bit in the salt. And when I say a little bit, maybe 20 or 30 minutes. While we make an herb crusted rub. Now, this is one of my favorite rubs. Before your time there was a
group called Simon & Garfunkel, and they had a song that
was called Scarborough fair. And they sang about herbs. Now, you probably don't know that song, but what herbs are we going to
be working with today, Leah? - Going to work with parsley, - Right - Sage, rosemary and thyme. - Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. That's going to be our core
flavor profile for the lamb. We're actually going
to make an herb butter, that's going to turn into a crust. After about a half an
hour with that salt on, while we toast these, we're going to make that herb butter, we're going to put it on the lamb, and we're going to get it onto the smoker. It's going to be a nice long smoke. Going to be a long day for us. We're going to have an amazing dinner when we get there. So, let's go ahead and trim up this lamb. What do you think, Leah? - Yeah. - Okay. It looks like this lamb
shoulder is trimmed pretty well. We've got a nice fat cap. We like about a quarter-inch fat cap, and, look, Leah, it's right about a quarter-inch all the way across. Maybe a little bit more
right there but not much. This is a lamb shoulder that
actually has ribs attached. So there's a little bit of membrane here, which we're not going to take off because we don't care about the membrane on lamb. We're not going to eat
this like we eat pork ribs. And maybe we got a little
bit too much fat over here. And if you an see here, Leah, touch that. Is that hard fat or soft fat? - [Leah] Oh, that's hard. - [Al] That's hard, right? Which means that's not going
to render when we cook. So, we're going to trim that off. It looks like that's all we're going to have to
do to trim this lamb. Now, the other thing
that we're going to do once we get this trimmed off is we're going to do something
called scoring the fat cap. Scoring the fat cap means we're
going to cut some slits in it that's going to allow
our crust to get inside. I don't want to cut too deep. I don't want to take any meat
with me if I can help it. But I want to get this
ugly stuff off of here. And when you look up close
you're going to see that, after I've trimmed this hard fat, that there is this pillowy fat underneath. And that's the good stuff. That's what we want. And that's going to render just fine. And now, Leah, I'm going to
try to round these edges. Okay. So, I've got a nice trim on there. Scoring's really easy all I'm
going to do is come across. I'm going to get deep into the fat. But I don't really want to cut meat. All I am doing is creating an opportunity for that herb rub, when the butter melts, to get into the meat. So, let's go ahead and
throw this on a drying rack. And we'll salt it up. All right, Leah, will you put the drying rack on for me? - [Leah] Yup. - Okay, let's start this way. With my clean hand, I'm going to work with the salt. And all I'm going to do is a
liberal sprinkling of salt. Now, there's not going to be
any salt in our herb rub, Leah. 'Cause there's going to be plenty of salt that we're putting on here. All right? And I get a little bit on the ends. We can be nice and liberal. This is going to soak into the meat. It's going to open up the
taste of the meat a little bit. There we go. All right, let's put this
in the fridge when we make our herb rub and we'll see
this in about half an hour. (upbeat hip hop music) Welcome back, so the lamb
is in the refrigerator letting that salt absorb. Leah, you want to make the herb rub now? - Yes. - Okay, let's put in the parsley. Good. And then the sage. There you go. And the rosemary. Good job. And then the thyme. All right now mix that
all up with your fingers. Good job. All right, so now I'm
going to take this over to the stove and toast it. So, we're going to toast these dry. I'm just going to take these
herbs that Leah mixed up for us. I'm going to spread 'em out
on the bottom of the pan. And it's not going to take long. Maybe a minute or two. We want to keep these moving. Because with a dry pan, if we let 'em sit for more
than five or ten seconds, we're going to end up burning the spices instead of turning them
into good aromatics. All right, now I'm going to
turn the heat down a little bit. And I'm going to put
in one stick of butter. I like cooking with Irish butter, But as long as it's unsalted
butter, you're fine. We're going to melt this down. Again, keeping it moving. We don't want our butter to burn. I'm on medium heat right now. Okay, looks like we're ready. So, we're just going to pour
this into our glass bowl. And let's let that chill
in the refrigerator. Get the rest of these
herbs out of the pan. All right, we're going to
throw this in the refrigerator, let this get back to solidifying. And we'll take the lamb out, and get some pepper and garlic on it. (upbeat hip hop music) Welcome back. So, the lamb has had
about a half an hour or so to let the salt absorb
into the meat and the fat. Our butter is now chilled
and ready to rub on. So let's go ahead and get
some seasoning on here. We're going to start with
a pepper and garlic mix. So, like you're used to seeing me do, I'm going to go up high so
that I get a good even coat. Notice I'm doing it
right on top of my tray so that I don't make a
mess and get in trouble when my wife comes up
and looks at the kitchen. And I'm just going to get
a good coating all over. Especially any exposed meat, but definitely on the fat as well. I don't have to worry about using a binder to keep this on here because we're going to be putting
that butter rub on here for the crust. Okay. So, I'm going to take my butter, I'm just going to mix it
up in here with my hands. So that I've got it good
and mixed with the herbs. And the butter is going
to be my binding agent. And its going to help it
to render into the fat. So, this is the time to have fun, we're literally just going
to spread it all over here. We got a light coating
on the presentation side. I'll come back and finish
that up after we do the back. Make sure all of the sides are coated. Membrane on lamb is thin enough that you will get some of
the flavor through there. Don't worry about this being too heavy. The butter is going to melt off. And all this is going to
render in with the fat. Okay, so I think this is
ready to get on the grill. You ready to go put it on the grill, Leah? - Yeah. - Let's do it. (upbeat hip hop music) Welcome to the backyard. So, we've go our large big green egg. It's been coming up to temperature
for a little while now. It's running right at 250 degrees. I'm controlling the temperature
with a combination of the ThermoWorks Signals and
the ThermoWorks Billows fan, that you'll see down here
on the bottom of the grill. So, this has got a thermometer
on the grate that's measuring the air temperature. And it's controlling the
airflow with the fan. So, even with the big green egg, I can get the same kind
of temperature control that you get on pellet and other smokers. So, let' go ahead and get the lamb on. So, you'll notice that I have a drip pan with some apple juice in it. That's going to help with our moisture. And I am literally just going
to put the lamb right on top. I'm going to make sure that
my butter is evenly coated. The thermometer is right behind the lamb. And it's going to measure
the temperature at the grate and control the airflow. So, we're going to leave this alone. We're going to come back and spritz it about every hour. But for the next four hours, its job is to render fat, cook
and absorb as much of that wonderful applewood smoke as possible. So, we'll be back in
about an hour to spritz. And we'll see what it looks like then. (upbeat hip hop music) Well it's been about four hours that our lamb shoulder's been on here. We've spritz it a couple of times. Let's see how it looks. Oh, it's looking really good! Nice and moist. Let's see how we're doing
on a temperature basis. All right, we're about a 170, so the meat is still tough, it's just starting to render now. What we're going to do is wrap
this in foil and let it braise in its own juices. So that's going to tenderize it, we're going to bring it
up to about 203 degrees. It should be nice and
tender at that point. And we'll be ready to pull it. So, first thing I'm going to do
is put the temperature probe in so I can plug this into
my ThermoWorks Signals. And I want to make sure that I am getting just meat and not bone. And I am fishing for
avoiding that shoulder bone. Okay, so I've got a good spot for it now. When I wrap it, notice
there is a bone here, I'm going to make sure that I
wrap this bone a little bit extra so that it doesn't damage the foil. And I'm going to put it meat
side down right here in my pan and I'm going to start by wrapping
this inner piece around the bone to provide a little
extra protection there. Then I'll wrap it up. Good. Now, that spritzing solution
that we were using earlier. We're going to pour a little bit of that spritzing solution in here. So, let's wrap this stuff
with its braising liquid. We're going to double wrap, use two pieces of foil. We want to get as tight as
we can around the meat, Leah. And the reason is that we
don't want any air pockets in there to allow steam to form. Steam actually isn't our friend here. It'll soften that nice bark that you saw on the lamb shoulder. And we don't want it to be soft. So, we'll take this. We'll put it back on the grill. We're going to let it
braise in its own juices for probably an hour and a half or so. Let it come up when the
temperature gets over 200 degrees. We know we're getting close and we'll be back and check it then. Okay so as you can see,
we're up at 203 degrees. Let's open it up and look
and see if its tender. It should be about ready now. So, I'm going to open it up. Can you guys smell that? Oh, you can't. Boy, that's too bad. Oh, you can see it and you
can see how tender it is. I don't even need the probe to test this. This is a very tender piece of meat. You can see the shoulder
blade is starting to come out. So, I' going to go ahead
and close this back up. We're going to put it
in our cooler to rest. We're going to rest it for about an hour, and then we're going to open it
up and have some pulled lamb. Aight, Leah, you want to go
ahead and bundle that up in that towel so it stays nice and cozy warm. Good job. Okay, we'll see you in about an hour. (upbeat hip hop music) Welcome back. So, I can't believe we've
had to wait this long. We started this at 11:30
this morning on the grill. We started preparing it
about 10:30 this morning. It's now about 6:30 at night
and it smells so amazing. But now its time, after
resting for about an hour, it's time to open and pull it. Boy, I hope that it tastes
as good as it smells. Are you ready to see, Leah? All right, come on in let's take a look. Come on in, Leah. Oooh, so look at all those
braising juices in there. That's a really good sign. That all is from the meat. I'm going to turn it over here. And pull the thermometer out. It's coming apart as I do this. So you can see the shoulder blade here, comes right out in my hand. The bones are coming right out. It is so soft and so tender. And we're just going to pull it apart. Feel free to use claws to pull if you don't have the
glove liners like I have. But, as hot as this is, it's still pretty manageable
with the glove liners. So, now I'm pulling the ribs off. So when they talk about
fall-off-the-bone ribs, I think this is what
they are talking about. Go ahead and put these
bones out of the way. And now I'm just going to pull
it the rest of the way apart. Are you excited, Leah? - Yeah. - You know, I was going to say
we needed to put some more of our apple juice and apple
cider vinegar in here but, boy, with all these braising juices, I don't think we're going to need to. So let's taste it before
we make that decision. See how easily this is coming apart, Leah? It's pretty hot, so make
sure you blow on it. Here, I'll give you a piece to try. I'll take a piece to try,
should we blow on these? (blowing) All right, you ready? (blowing) All right, cheers! Oh sh.. I almost used a bad word. (laughs) - [Leah] I heard it. - [Al] Want some more?
- [Leah] I heard. (Al laughs) - [Al] So it seems like this is a pattern on this channel. And I love you guys. I am so glad that you subscribed, and I feel so bad that you
can't taste this with us. You know, you should just come over, and we'll have dinner at some point. Hey listen, It's been fun having you
here on Eat More Vegans. I can't wait to see you next week. If you are not already subscribed, please smash that subsrcibe button. Hit that bell notification so you know when we post the next video. We'll be doing a video
about every week or so. So, there'll be lots to taste. You ready? - [Leah] Yeah.
- [Al] Yeah. Okay, hey, thanks again for your support. We'll see you next time
on Eat More Vegans.
