Roast Leg of Lamb Recipe (serves 8-10)

Ingredients

Marinade (Blend marinade ingredients in a blender, just a few pulses until well mixed.)

  • 1/2 cup orange juice
  • 1 cup white wine
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons of fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon of dried thyme
  • 2 Tbsp of fresh chopped rosemary or 1 Tbsp of dried rosemary
  • 1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground pepper
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil

Lamb Roast

  • 1 (6-pound) leg of lamb, bone-in or boneless. If boneless, the leg should be tied up with kitchen string by butcher.
  • Marinade
  • Salt

Method

1 Place lamb and marinade into a plastic bag. Squeeze out as much of the air as possible from the bag and seal. Wrap again with another plastic bag to ensure that the marinating lamb doesn’t leak. Marinate for several hours, or overnight, in the refrigerator. Remove the lamb, still in its marinade bag, from the refrigerator at least an hour before putting in the oven to help bring the lamb closer to room temperature before roasting.

2 Preheat oven to 425°F.  Remove the lamb roast from its marinade bag (you may want to temporarily place lamb in another roasting pan, just to make it less messy to work with.) Pat dry the marinade off the lamb with paper towels. Generously season all sides of the roast. Arrange fattiest side up, so while the lamb is cooking the fat will melt into the meat. Insert a meat thermometer into the thickest part of the roast, not touching the bone if your roast is bone-in.

3 Roast at 425°F for 20 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 300°F and roast an additional hour (for a 6 pound roast), about 10-12 minutes per pound. If you are cooking a roast bone-in, the bone will act as an insulator and will require a longer cooking time than a boneless roast.  Note that every time you open the oven door, you’ll need 10 minutes or so to bring the oven back up to temperature, thus slowing down the cooking process. So, don’t check too often. Remove from the oven anywhere from 130°F to 135°F for medium rare. Lamb should never be cooked until well done or it will be too dry. Let stand for 15-20 minutes before carving. Cut away the kitchen string and slice with a sharp carving knife, 1/2 inch thick slices, against the grain of the meat.

4 While the roast is resting, use a metal spatula to scrape up the drippings in the roasting pan. Use the drippings to make gravy, or use just the drippings themselves to serve with the lamb.