Stuffed Leg of Lamb

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Stuffed Leg of Lamb

The finished meal - Stuffed leg of lamb with peas and baked potatoes.

It was the Rednecks time to cook and the missus suggested that we have roast leg of lamb - suddenly I had a ‘Jamie Oliver Moment’. Why not de-bone and stuff the leg for a change? Sounded like a good idea at the time and as I had not made stuffing before, a quick browse through the New Zealanders cooking Bible ‘The Edmonds Cook Book’ was undertaken to confirm the ingredients required.

As we were out of breadcrumbs Mrs. Redneck quickly made a white loaf in the bread maker which, after cooling, was chopped up in the food processor to make the necessary crumbs.

I thought I could de-bone the lamb leaving a neat cavity in which to place the stuffing mixture – ha ha very funny. When you look at a lamb leg it appears that the bone is fairly straight – it goes in one end and out the other. Boy how wrong can I be. The unseen section of bone has all sorts of knobbly bits attached making it almost impossible for an amateur butcher to neatly carve out so I decided to split the whole thing down the middle, hack out the bone, stuff, then tie the whole thing back together with string. When you think of it, the knobbly bits would be required to hold the lambs leg muscles in place otherwise they would be walking around the paddocks with their thighs around their ankles – a bit like kids walking around school with the socks down!

The stuffing was made using breadcrumbs, onion, rosemary, garlic, mixed herbs, salt, pepper, egg and a good shot of Grand Mariner Liqueur to add a bit of zing. The skin side of the meat was scored with a sharp knife and rubbed with garlic, salt, pepper and rosemary then flipped over to receive the stuffing. The lamb was then rolled up around the filling, like a Swiss Roll. The missus then assisted me to tie the whole thing together with string. The outside was dusted with corn flour, drizzled with oil then wrapped in tin foil (I was scared of the stuffing escaping).

The carving process produced a few meat off cuts, the largest of which was also stuffed then frozen for a future meal. The smaller scraps were saved for a ‘stir fry’ the next night. The unused fresh breadcrumbs were dried in the oven then placed in an airtight container for future use – Wiener schnitzel anyone?

Although the resulting meal was delicious I instructed Mrs. Redneck to shoot me if I ever considered de-boning another cut of meat – better left to the experts!