Lamb Shoulder

Easy as anything .. A monkey could do this one.

As always get your Lamb of your craft butcher, its traditional an Easter lunch dish but I think its at its best late summer when the lambs have had time to fatten up. The shoulder is a great roast as its far cheaper than the leg and takes a long time so as long as its prepared properly you cant really overcook it.

My butcher rolls the shoulder up for me but any way it goes in oven is fine.

First step.Leave it out of fridge for a few hours, as you know from my other blogs I try to always cook meat from room temperature its a good habit to get into even with this dish that cooks for a long time at low temperature.

Marinate the shoulder. In the pictures shown I used garlic, salt, mint sauce, English mustard, wholegrain mustard and olive oil give it a good rub and get it into all the nooks of the joint. Do this the night before or when you take it out of fridge in morning.

Get a heavy based frying pan smoking hot and seal all the sides of the joint don't worry if some of the marinade goes black just make sure there is good dark colour all over.

Next step it to prepare your vegetables, for this recipe I use all root veg, butternut squash, carrots, parsnip & swede, cut them all into large chucks. I fry them in the same dirty pan from lamb and add water, about half a pint should do. This veg and water goes into a roasting tray then lamb on top and seal it very tightly with tin foil.

The only thing that can go wrong with this dish is that the water and juices will evaporate in oven so make sure the tinfoil is tight.  

Put it in a hot oven 250oc or as high as it will go then once lamb is in oven turn it down to 140oc for 4 hours. Plenty of time to do whatever you do on Sundays walk the dog, go to the pub, shopping etc

After 4 hours is done drain off the juices for your gravy (ill put up a blog for fresh gravy soon but if you thicken the juice with gravy granules and some water it will be fine)

The vegetables at bottom of tray will taste brilliant you can serve them as is or I like to mash them with potato masher.

The meat will not slice its far to tender at this stage so just pull it off with a thongs, add your rich gravy and serve with roast or mash potatoes..

Easy..............