Fragrant lamb leg baked in foil. Recipes for cooking lamb leg in the oven with vegetables and aromatic herbs

Lamb is a very tasty, satisfying and healthy meat. After all, sheep are usually grazed high in the mountains, where the air is cleaner and the grass is juicier. Therefore, sheep meat is much cleaner than pig meat. Many doctors often advise giving children low-fat lamb. It contains less cholesterol than commonly consumed pork and beef.
But despite this, there are a lot of fatty layers in lamb, and the meat itself has a specific smell. Often this is the main reason for the low popularity of this type of meat. Many do not like it for its characteristic smell, or simply do not know how to cook deliciously. And in order to enjoy the taste of a wonderful leg of lamb with vegetables, which we will bake together now in the oven, we will resort to a little trick. And this trick lies in a special set of spices, which emphasizes the aroma of meat and its tenderness. By using these specific spices in the right amount, you can bring out the beauty of lamb. And vegetables baked in lamb fat will add their own flavors and you will get a wonderful full-fledged second dish with lamb. Let's cook this dish together!

Ingredients:

• 1 leg of lamb;
• 0.5 kg of potatoes;
• 2 small carrots;
• 3 bell peppers;
• 4 medium onions;
• 2 small eggplants;
• 6 fleshy tomatoes;
• 3 cloves of garlic;
• 2 tbsp spices for lamb;
• 3 sprigs of parsley and basil;
• a little vegetable oil;
• salt to taste.

Recipe for lamb with vegetables in the oven

1. We wash the lamb leg under running water and blot it with a paper towel. We remove the film with a knife, cut out thick veins. Cut meat from thin bones. For this part it will be convenient to take a leg of lamb.

2. We make 15-20 pricks with a knife so that the meat is more tender.

3. We prepare the ingredients for the mixture, which we will rub the leg of lamb. We will need a set of spices for lamb, 3 cloves of garlic and 50 ml of vegetable oil.
Now I would like to talk separately about a set of spices for cooking lamb. It can be found on the market from private traders, or you can assemble it yourself. It includes in equal proportions: zira, jambul, curry, coronder, turmeric, paprika, regan, thyme, tomato and saffron. This set of spices will also go well with other dishes where lamb is used as the main ingredient. For example, it will make an excellent pilaf with lamb.

4. In a separate small container, prepare a mixture for lubricating lamb.

5. Rub the lamb leg with this mixture. Some of the mixture will remain, and we will use it a little later.

6. We will bake the lamb leg in a large and deep baking sheet. Between times, we set the oven to warm up to 200 degrees. We grease the baking sheet with a kitchen brush with a thin layer of vegetable oil.

7. We spread the lamb leg and meat cut from the bone.

8. We wash the eggplants, cut them into thick rings and sprinkle salt on top so that all the bitter juice is gone. We leave for 5-10 minutes.

9. Peel the potatoes, wash and cut into 2 or 4 pieces. It will be tastier if all the vegetables are chopped coarsely.

10. Peel the carrots, wash and cut into slices.

11. Peel the bulbs, wash and cut into large half rings.

12. We wash the eggplants under running water and put them on a baking sheet with lamb and vegetables. Salt on top and pour the remaining mixture with spices and vegetable oil.

13. Cover the baking sheet tightly with foil and send it to the preheated oven for 50 minutes.

14. We make cuts on tomatoes.

5. Dip the tomatoes in boiling water for 5 minutes to make it easier to peel them.

6. Remove the hard skin.

7. Peel the bell pepper from the stalk and seeds. Wash and chop coarsely.

8. We take out the lamb with vegetables from the oven and remove the foil.

9. Put the tomatoes and bell peppers on top. We send it to the oven for another 5-7 minutes.

10. Check the vegetables for readiness by piercing them with a fork. If the vegetables are poorly baked, we send them to the oven already without lamb, so as not to overdry the meat. But usually this time is enough for the vegetables to bake. Lay the leg of lamb on a serving platter. Mix vegetables with lamb juice on a baking sheet, then put them on a dish.

11. Wrap the bone in foil. It is convenient to take a leg for it to cut meat.

I really like lamb and dishes from it. You can cook lamb in different ways, but in this recipe I suggest roasting a leg of lamb. It's not difficult, believe me! Read on for more details on baking.

To roast a leg of lamb, we need:

• Lamb leg (whole) or its wide part - 1-1.5 kg
• Carrot - 1 pc.
• Garlic - 2-3 cloves
• Spicy herbs - I use thyme and oregano, a few sprigs of rosemary
• Salt, pepper - to taste
• Mustard ready - 1 tbsp. spoon (you can use mustard seeds in the form of peas)
• Olive oil
• Sleeve for baking

I marinate lamb in advance, the day before, so that the meat turns out delicious and tender. And I bake in the sleeve already on the day of serving.

How to cook a leg of lamb in a roasting sleeve

1. Wash the leg of lamb thoroughly, cut off unnecessary fat if you want to make it leaner (it can be used in cooking). We clean the carrots and cut them into cubes, 1.5-2 cm long. We clean the garlic, we also cut them into small cubes. Next, using a knife, we make cuts in the meat with a depth of the size of pieces of garlic and carrots. In these cuts we will place the carrots and garlic. Make 15-20 cuts to stuff the leg of lamb. This is quite enough. And the remaining pieces of garlic and carrots, just cut them into cubes, we just add them to the meat.
2. Next, prepare a simple marinade: mix oregano, thyme, 1 teaspoon of salt, pepper, mustard, add 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Mix everything thoroughly until a homogeneous mass. We rub our lamb leg with the resulting marinade, place it in a cup with a lid or wrap it in aluminum foil and send it to marinate for a day (or at least 8-12 hours).
3. Before baking, place the leg of lamb in a baking sleeve, spread 3-4 sprigs of rosemary around. We carefully tie the edges of the sleeve or use special clips. Do not forget to make several cuts 1-1.5 cm long in the upper part of the sleeve so that the air comes out.
4. And we got to the main secret - how to properly bake a leg of lamb in the oven? This method was told to my friends by a meat seller in the market. The method turned out to be so wonderful that now we all use it to roast lamb. So, you need to preheat the oven to the maximum, usually 250-270 degrees, depending on the model of your oven. We put our lamb in the sleeve (on a baking sheet) in the oven and bake for 1.5 hours, lowering the temperature by 10 degrees every 10 minutes. Thus, after 90 minutes, the temperature will reach 180 degrees, and the leg of lamb will be juicy, tender and perfectly baked. 15-20 minutes before the end of cooking, it is necessary to cut the sleeve at the top so that the lamb is browned. And now our leg of lamb, baked in a sleeve in the oven, is ready!

You can serve a baked leg of lamb as a main course, for example, after a light meal.

Lamb is a dish far from being as exotic and pretentious as it seems to an average housewife from Nizhnevartovsk.

Too much European has become in our women, especially in recent years.

It's time to remember about the eastern roots.

In the Caucasus, to such a treasure as a whole leg of lamb, the wearer of skirts would never be allowed to go.

A Russian hostess with lamb meat can easily “make friends” if she knows some rules.

Choosing the right leg of lamb

Purchasing a fresh and high-quality lamb part for the upcoming dinner is the first, but far from the easiest step. Especially for a woman, and especially for a Russian.

Many hostesses do not even realize that in the recipe for a leg of lamb baked in a sleeve read from the Internet, it is not at all about a ram, an adult well-fed animal, but about a miniature delicacy lamb.

In our market, an inexperienced customer can slip anything, even a part of a seasoned cattle overgrown with fat with a specific aroma.

Therefore, you should first decide which leg you want to buy: a one-year-old lamb or a tender two-month-old lamb?

The youthfulness of the meat is just as important as its freshness.

You can distinguish a young lamb from an old one by the weight of the legs. Dairy lamb weighs about 2 kilos, and an older carcass leg of lamb weighs up to 5 kilos.

Pay attention to the color of the purchased piece. The meat should not be dark or gray, and the fat should not be yellow. Pink lamb with white fat in moderation is what you need.

By the way, it is very important not to get confused in the terminology, and not to buy a piece of an older ram because of the reluctance to cook from a dairy sheep. Believe me, the gender of the animal does not affect the taste.

It is better to buy lamb in a specialized department of the store, and not in the market. And especially not spontaneously!

Cooking a leg of lamb, like any other meat, is not a lottery, so quality assurance should not be dismissed. The best option is a chilled piece of carcass, which retains all the juiciness and nutritional values, unlike meat "ice cream".

Learning to process lamb meat

Cooking a leg of lamb begins with the preparation of meat - inspection and processing of the leg.

Lamb is not chicken, you can't just wash it before baking. Fat and layers must be removed immediately. Thorough cleansing of a piece of everything unnecessary is not a whim of culinary specialists, but an important condition for eliminating meat odor.

For this procedure, it is necessary to prepare a sharpened carving knife.

Taking the leg by the thin end, you need to insert the knife between the meat and the fat and gently turn the blade from side to side, peeling the fat from the lamb and gently tearing the fatty films.

After that, the fatty membrane can be easily torn off the ram's leg with one strong jerk.

Unless the leg of lamb recipe calls for cutting the leg into pieces, you must be very careful not to damage the integrity of the piece when removing the lard from it.

The remains of the fat layer are easily cut off with a knife, after which the piece is washed and dried for some time.

Marinate, rub or stuff lamb leg

Juicy lamb can be marinated, rubbed with spices, herbs, or stuffed with various spices, vegetables, etc. It all depends on your tastes and instructions for the selected recipe.

Lamb meat accepts the classic vinegar marinade (water, vinegar, spices), as well as many exotic options with honey, mustard, olive oil, wine.

Leg of lamb in the sleeve, as a rule, always requires a marinade. If you want to fry and bake meat, then you can limit yourself to rubbing it with various spices.

You can not be shy in gastronomic delights, experimenting with fragrant herbs, hot spices, sweet dried fruits.

Among the most traditional spices suitable for lamb are rosemary, basil, black and red pepper, as well as chili and paprika, bay leaf, ginger, cilantro, garlic and many others.

As a lamb leg filling, you can take both classic meat apples, prunes, hot or sweet peppers, carrots, garlic, and non-standard products: lard, berries, and even anchovies.

How to cook a leg of lamb in the oven

Before baking, a piece of lamb carcass is either fried in a frying pan or generously smeared with sunflower oil. These manipulations are necessary to obtain an appetizing "tan" of meat.

Of the entire carcass, the leg of lamb has the least amount of fat, so for the first acquaintance with this meat, you can confidently choose it. When buying, you should pay attention to the color of the product: the fat should be as light as possible! If it is yellow, cook a lamb dish even in a slow cooker, even in the oven, but as a result, you are unlikely to be able to enjoy it because of the specific pungent smell. You can also pre-marinate the lamb before baking, you can use any marinade to your liking. Perhaps every housewife has her own proven method of marinating.

Secrets of Roasting a Lamb

1. Delicate milk lamb meat has an ideal taste without a characteristic smell. But it is difficult to buy it (deficit), but it costs more than ordinary lamb. Therefore, your attention should be attracted to the meat of an animal up to 18 months old. You can determine it both by the light color of the fat, and by the gentle tone of the muscle fibers themselves. If they are saturated red, brown - the animal is old.
2. Before cooking a leg of lamb in the oven, the recipe always calls for rinsing it in hot water.(this will wash off the dirt adhering to the surface layer of fat) and remove the maximum fat from the meat, leaving a thin, even layer of it throughout the piece. So you protect the dish from dryness. A good solution for how to cook a leg of lamb in the oven is to use a cooking sleeve or foil. So the lamb shank in the oven in foil will evenly fry in its own juice, while fat will flow out from an uncovered piece.
3. If you want to keep the maximum juices in the dish, do not make punctures for stuffing meat. Through these cuts, the piece will lose more of the delicious juice than required.
4. The time it takes to cook a leg depends on its weight. You can calculate it like this: for every kilogram of carcass, it takes 40 minutes in the oven and another plus 20 minutes in addition. If you have a cooking thermometer, it's even easier - set it to the thickest part of the piece. The temperature inside at 65 degrees is an indicator of the readiness of the dish.
5. Rosemary will allow you to improve each recipe for cooking a leg of lamb in the oven. It is this spicy herb that blends perfectly with this meat. Be sure to add it when cooking lamb in a fresh piece (twigs) or dry.
6. When the cooking time has passed, do not rush to cut the meat. The piece needs to stand for 20 minutes so that the juices inside it are evenly distributed. So you get a dish of perfect tenderness and high taste.

Recipe with aromatic herbs

This dish can be cooked in a sleeve or on a wire rack. A leg of lamb baked in the oven in a sleeve will turn out to be more juicy (as in the photo). And along with the meat on the grill, you can bake tasty potatoes at the same time.

So, you will need:

• lamb leg - weighing 2 kg;
• rosemary sprigs - 5 pcs.;
• dried juniper berries, Provence herbs, peppercorns;
• garlic - 10 cloves;
• olive oil;
• salt.

Cooking

1. Grind dry spices into crumbs, mix with finely chopped garlic, rosemary and oil.
2. Clean the leg from excess fat, rub with a fragrant mixture, sprinkle with salt.
3. Wrap in a bag, refrigerate for 4-12 hours.
4. A few hours before cooking, remove the leg from the refrigerator and let stand at room temperature.
5. Lay on the wire rack, put in the oven, preheated to 230 °. Place a baking sheet below where the fat will drain. Pour some hot water into it, as well as a glass of white wine, which will give the dish a luxurious aroma.
6. How long to bake a roll? Bake 10 minutes, turn over. Hold for another 10 minutes and lower the temperature to 180°.
7. If you plan to serve the dish with potatoes, cut them into thin circles and place them in a baking dish under the wire rack, with a sprig of rosemary. It is baked in lamb fat and becomes amazingly tasty.
8. After 1.5 hours, remove the leg from the oven, wrap it in foil and leave for 20 minutes. When the meat rests, it can be served at the table.

Recipe with vegetables

For a leg of lamb with vegetables baked in the oven, you can use various combinations of side dishes: eggplant, bell pepper, tomato. We offer a simple and tasty option with small potatoes (if young, you can leave them in their uniforms) and carrots.

You will need:

• lamb leg - 2 kg;
• garlic - 1 head;
• rosemary - needles from 5 branches;
• salt - Art. spoon;
• black pepper - 2 teaspoons;
• potatoes - 900 g;
• carrots - 500 g;
• olive oil.

Cooking

1. Rinse and dry the leg, rub it with pepper and salt. Stuff with garlic and rosemary. Leave in the refrigerator for 2 hours.
2. Remove from the cold at least 1 hour before placing in the oven. In the form, put the potatoes with tubers, large pieces of carrots, grease them with olive oil, salt. Lay a leg of lamb on top.
3. Preheat the oven to 200 °, bake for 25 minutes. Then you should lower the temperature to 160 °, and simmer the meat for a little over an hour.

During the cooking of the meat, a delicious juice is released, which you can use as an ideal sauce for a vegetable side dish. Cut the leg into thin slices and serve with vegetables.

Lamb legs- an offal, but at the same time a very useful part of lamb. The most important thing is to choose a quality product. On the market you can find both the legs of a one-year-old lamb and the legs of a two-month-old tender lamb. The youth of the legs is an important criterion for their selection.

The age of lamb can be very easily determined with the help of scales: a leg of milk lamb will weigh about 2 kg, while an older leg of lamb will “pull” up to 5 kg.

High-quality lamb has a delicate pink color and a small amount of fat (see photo).

How to cut and cook?

Cooking a leg of lamb always begins with its careful processing. It is recommended to remove the layer immediately, this is done in order to rid the meat of the specific smell of lamb. For the same purpose, soak the foot in cold water for 12 hours, changing the water every hour.

Cut the leg with a well-sharpened knife. During cutting, fragments of bones could remain on the meat, which should certainly be removed. The leg is processed very carefully, slowly, so as not to damage the meat. Any excess pieces of pulp along the large bone should also be cut off. From meat scraps, you can cook goulash, a warm salad, or fry with liver. The leg is held by the thin part, carefully slipping a well-sharpened knife between the meat and fat. With a knife blade, the fat is gradually exfoliated from the leg, gently steaming the fatty film. Then the film is removed from the leg with one jerk. The fat pocket contains too much iron, which makes the meat difficult to digest. The remaining fat is carefully removed with a knife, trying not to damage the leg itself, it is washed and dried. The small amount of fat that remains on the surface of the leg will give the meat an appetizing golden brown. Next, the leg is cooked according to the culinary recipe, for some dishes it is cut into small pieces or used as a whole.

A cut leg of lamb is stuffed with herbs; fragrant rosemary is excellent in combination with spicy garlic. An incision is made on the surface of the leg with a sharp knife, rosemary and garlic are placed inside the incision. The stuffed leg is placed on a baking dish, on both sides the meat is rubbed with black pepper and salt. Sprinkle the leg with brown sugar in order to form a golden crust during baking. To improve the color of the meat, you can sprinkle it with paprika.

Use in cooking

Legs of lamb are cooked in a variety of ways. So, they are pickled, baked in the oven, stuffed with spices. Lamb goes well with the classic marinade, which consists of vinegar, water, spices. Exotic lovers cook a leg of lamb with honey, mustard, wine. In the sleeve, the leg is always cooked in a marinade, but you can fry or bake meat by rubbing it with spices, which are suitable for fragrant herbs, spicy seasonings and even dried fruits. Chefs recommend cooking lamb with rosemary, basil, pepper, paprika, chili, cilantro, garlic. You can stuff lamb legs with meat and apples, prunes, carrots and sweet peppers, lard. Gourmets can stuff the leg with berries or anchovies.

Lamb legs baked in dough are very tasty. On a pre-prepared leg, small incisions are made, which are filled with garlic cloves, herbs, and oil. Sprinkle a little salt on top and bake in the oven. At this time, roll out the dough of such a size that you can wrap your leg in it. Leg of lamb wrapped in dough, smeared with beaten egg. The meat is baked for 40 minutes, served with baked vegetables and herbs. Lamb is baked to a medium degree of roasting, inside the meat should be pink. Stewed lamb is baked for more than an hour.

In England, lamb legs are always served with mint sauce.

Mint not only goes well with lamb, but also helps to kill the specific smell of this meat, which not everyone likes.

The sauce is prepared very simply: a few tablespoons of sugar are dissolved in boiling water to get sugar syrup, then fresh mint leaves are poured with wine vinegar, and sugar syrup is added after a few minutes.

How to marinate lamb leg and recipes for the best marinades?

To marinate lamb leg deliciously, you do not need to use any special ingredients for this. Every housewife has all the necessary products in the house.

Marinating a leg of lamb for further baking in the oven is as follows. A lamb leg (weighing up to two kilograms) should be washed well, dried and small cuts up to two centimeters deep should be made on the meat. Then, one garlic clove should be put into each incision (you will need eight cloves in total). Next, you need to squeeze the juice from one lemon into a separate bowl, add two tablespoons of rosemary and mustard powder, as well as table salt and black pepper to your taste, stirring well. With the finished marinade, you need to grease the lamb leg, wrap the meat in foil and put it in the refrigerator for a day.

After the specified period of time, the marinated lamb leg must be removed from the foil and put into a special container for baking in the oven. First, marinated meat should be baked for twenty minutes at a temperature of about two hundred degrees, and then lower it to one hundred and eighty and cook for about one hour. The baked leg of lamb will turn out very juicy, fragrant and tasty.

In addition to the classic method of marinating a meat product, there are other marinade recipes.

In any marinade, the leg of lamb will turn out to be very appetizing and fragrant.

Below is a video on how to roast lamb legs on coals.

Lamb legs in the oven

There are several recipes for cooking a leg of lamb in the oven. Before proceeding directly to baking, it is necessary to fry the legs in sunflower oil until a delicious crust. Then the lamb legs are sent to an oven preheated to 250 degrees, baked for 10 minutes on each side, constantly turning the meat over. In order to bake the legs well, they should be kept in the oven for 20 minutes.

The pickled leg in the sleeve is baked for 1 hour. When baking raw meat, lamb is kept in the oven for at least an hour. A little water is poured into the mold, after half an hour the leg is poured with the juice that the meat let out, left in the oven for another 20 minutes. To make the meat as juicy as possible, it should be baked at a temperature of 145 degrees Celsius. The leg of lamb is served on a large platter, decorated with rosemary leaves. The meat is consumed hot, while the cooled meat is perfect for slicing, which is served with mustard or sauce.

Since lamb is considered fatty meat, vegetables, mashed potatoes can be served as a side dish. Lamb legs go well with pita bread, herbs, fresh vegetable salads. Traditionally lamb is served with red sweet or semi-sweet wine.

Leg of lamb in the sleeve

Many housewives prefer to bake lamb in their sleeves. The leg of lamb should be marinated first. Marinade can be based on wine vinegar, fragrant herbs. You can marinate meat in honey, soy sauce. Gently with a sharp knife, punctures are made in the pulp and rubbed with a mixture of herbs. The leg is placed in a sleeve, tied and left to marinate for 6 hours. The oven is heated to 220 degrees Celsius and the leg is baked for 20 minutes. Next, the sleeve is opened, the juice that stood out during the baking process is poured over the meat and left for another 20 minutes, the finished meat forms a golden crust.

In many European countries, a leg of lamb is traditionally baked for Easter dinner. This dish looks very appetizing and exudes an amazing aroma of fried meat. Legs of lamb will decorate the table at any holiday.

How to fry and boil?

Roasting a leg of lamb takes a little patience and effort. Initially, you need to prepare a marinade for lamb meat. To do this, mix sunflower oil, chopped herbs, juice of one lemon, chopped garlic, ground pepper, and salt to your taste in a shallow container. Thoroughly rub the lamb leg with the finished mixture, wrap it in food foil and put it in the refrigerator for twenty-four hours. After the time has passed, the meat will need to be removed from the refrigerator and let it lie for about thirty minutes at room temperature. Then we remove the foil from the meat, and put the leg of lamb on a baking sheet and put it in the oven for frying at a temperature of two hundred and thirty degrees. Turn the meat every fifteen minutes. After thirty minutes, the temperature in the oven should be reduced to one hundred and eighty degrees and fry the meat until tender.

To check whether the leg of lamb is ready or not, you need to pierce the meat with a knife. If white juice comes out, then the dish is ready. If the juice is bloody, the meat should be cooked a little more.

Once the leg of lamb is ready, it must be wrapped in foil and covered with a towel to cool on top.

In addition to frying, the leg of lamb can also be boiled. To do this, put the product in an enameled pan and fill it completely with water, adding peppercorns and table salt. (one liter of water will require two peas and one teaspoon of salt). Boil over low heat for about an hour and a half. Then salt again and boil for another twenty minutes. Boiled lamb leg is ready. For cooking, cooks advise taking only the hind legs of lamb.

How to smoke a leg of lamb?

To smoke a leg of lamb, you must first rinse the meat well and make small cuts on it with a depth of at least two centimeters. Then generously rub the leg of lamb with table salt, a spicy mixture of ground rosemary and thyme and brush with olive oil. Wrap the meat in cling film and refrigerate for about twenty-four hours. After the lapse of time, the leg of lamb must be baked until half cooked in the oven at a temperature of two hundred degrees, and then allowed to cool.

Now we start the process of smoking. To do this, you need a barbecue and a skewer, on which you need to plant meat. A skewer with a leg of lamb should be placed over the smoke and the meat should be smoked for about an hour and a half, turning occasionally.

You can also make cold smoked lamb leg. It is best to cook the hind legs of lamb. So, wash and dry the meat well. Make a marinade by mixing two tablespoons of a spicy mixture (dill, garlic, pepper, coriander, parsley) with five grams of granulated sugar, twenty grams of nitrite salt and table salt (it will take about five hundred grams). Spice it is necessary to rub the leg of lamb, wrap it in cling film and put it in the refrigerator for exactly seven days.

After a week, the leg of lamb should be removed from the film and hung out in the cold to dry for about five days. After the specified period of time, you can directly proceed to the smoking of meat itself. In the smokehouse, the temperature of cold smoke should not exceed twenty-five degrees. The cooking process takes about ten hours.

After the leg of lamb is ready, it must be dried. To do this, hang the meat in a dark, cool place for seven days. After a week, delicious smoked lamb leg will be ready to eat. The shelf life of the product is about two months. Store only in the refrigerator.