Sunday Roast - Slow-Roasted Shoulder of Lamb

I headed back to Kent at the weekend, and as usual I was in a cooking mood. I decided to challenge myself and cook a roast. My mum bought a shoulder of lamb (big enough for Sunday roast and a few days in the week). I cooked the lamb with roast vegetables underneath and did a separate lot of roast potatoes, alongside a vegetarian option for me. I have been a vegetarian for as long as I can remember and I don’t mind cooking meat just as long as I don’t have to actually touch it!

I looked through my Jamie Oliver books for inspiration (despite the collection taking up an entire bookshelf I rarely cook from them). There are recipes for roast lamb in most of them so I narrowed it down to a few and got my mum to choose the best one. I didn’t use the exact ingredients that he used, but it was close enough and I followed the technique. The recipe is from Jamie's Dinners.

Ingredients

1 shoulder of lamb

olive oil

freshly ground salt and black pepper
a handful of fresh rosemary

6 cloves of garlic

3 medium white onions, peeled and quartered

4 medium carrots, scrubbed and cut into rough chunks

2 medium leeks, washed and cut into rough chunks

2 bay leaves
a handful of fresh thyme

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

500ml stock

To prepare the lamb:

NB: Take the lamb out of the fridge about half an hour before you want to prepare it.

(1) Rub the lamb with olive oil, salt and pepper (my mum did this bit) and put it into a roasting tray. Using a knife make small incisions all over the lamb and poke rosemary leaves and cloves of garlic (we used three) into them. Jamie assures that this gives great flavour to the meat. Preheat your oven to 200°C/gas 6. 

(2) I took over at this point, and added the remaining three garlic cloves, onion, carrots, leeks, bay leaves and thyme to the pan. 

(3) Pour over the tomatoes and stock. 

(4) Grease around the top of the roasting tray with butter to make a seal and put the lid on. Turn the oven down to 170°C/gas 2 and cook the lamb for 3½ to 4 hours. The lamb is done when it is soft, melting and sticky and you can pull it apart with a fork.  

(5) Transfer the lamb to a metal plate and pull the meat off the bone using two forks, extracting the rosemary stalks as you go.

Serve the vegetables separately and use the juicy, tomato sauce in the pan as a gravy.

A feast! Roast lamb and vegetables, roast potatoes, gravy and mint jelly

Look out for the veggie option and dessert posts - coming later!