Jamie Oliver's perfect baked leg of lamb
Soft, succulent lamb meat with the flavors of garlic and rosemary is the perfect holiday dish. And it's easy to prepare - while it's baking in the oven, you can go about your business with a couple of glances in the oven. Salt lovers may have to slightly salt the meat in the plate, as it's not too salty inside, but it's easy to fix.
Composition:
- leg of lamb (2 kg) - 1 piece .
- onion - 2 pcs.
- carrots - 2 pcs.
- celery stalks - 2 pcs.
- garlic - 1 head
- olive or sunflower oil
- salt and freshly ground pepper
- a small bunch of fresh thyme or rosemary (or a mixture of both)
Cooking:
Take the meat out of the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking.
Preheat the oven to 240 degrees.
Chop some of the thyme or rosemary, peel 1 clove of garlic and slice into thin plates. Wash the lamb, cut off the fat and films, but do not discard. Make several punctures in the meat and pierce it with garlic and chopped herbs. After that, spray the meat with oil and rub it well with salt, pepper and herbs.
You don't need to peel the vegetables, just wash them and chop them coarsely. Break the garlic head into cloves, leaving them unpeeled. Arrange the vegetables, garlic and herbs in a mound in the center of a baking tray and drizzle with oil.
Place the lamb on top of the mound of vegetables and cover the top with the cut fat - the rendered fat will keep the meat from drying out, but can be easily removed from the meat before serving.
Allow the lamb to be cooked through the meat.
Place the baking tray in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 200 degrees. Cook the meat for 1.5 hours (45 minutes for each kilogram of weight), so that the meat inside remains not raw, but pink. Pour the lamb with the fat released in the middle of cooking; if the vegetables dry out, pour a little water on the tray. If you want to bake the potatoes with the meat, put them in the oven for the last hour of roasting.
When the meat is cooked, remove the baking tray from the oven and transfer the meat to a board. Cover it with foil and a towel and set it aside to "rest" 10-15 minutes, meanwhile prepare the sauce.
Place the sliced meat on a platter and serve with the gravy and roasted vegetables.
Bon appetite!