Sous Vide Bone-in Leg of Lamb

Tender and juicy, this sous vide bone-in leg of lamb is guaranteed to be cooked to perfection inside and out. You do have to start one day ahead of when you would like to serve it, but most of the time is hands off, with a sous vide precision cooker. Finish it off by roasting in a hot oven.

When my son-in-law gave me a sous vide precision cooker for Christmas several years ago, I had very little knowledge about that method of cooking. A lot of research and a few experiments won me over. Sous vide is a great way to control the internal temperature of meat, making sure that it’s not over-cooked or dried out.

My one issue, which I touched upon in my post for a chicken crown roast, is that all the recipes I could find online were for boneless meat. Expanding on my triumph with the brace of guinea fowl and chicken roast, I gave a whole leg of lamb a try. Another triumph. In fact, I’ve made a whole leg of lamb this way a couple of times and now I don’t think I’ll roast one any other way. The only downside is that I have to plan ahead, but it's totally worth it!

The inside is tender and juicy from the long cooking at low temperature in the sous vide but the outside still has all the divine golden bits (and drippings in the pan) to make a delicious gravy from its time in a hot oven. Best of both worlds.

Sous Vide Bone-in Leg of Lamb

If you want tender lamb cooked to perfection, sous vide is the way to go. Perfect lamb every time. I'll be honest. I wasn't planning to share this recipe because I didn't know how popular sous vide cooking would get, but it was so good, I couldn't not share. Please forgive the non-staged photos.

Ingredients
1 whole leg of lamb, bone in – about 2 kg or 4 lbs 6 ozs
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 sprigs fresh rosemary or thyme, stems discarded, leaves minced

Method
Use a sharp knife to score the fat on the leg of lamb. Rub it with the salt, pepper and herb of your choice. I usually do rosemary because it partners so well with lamb, but thyme is also good.

Put the leg of lamb in a sealable, sous-vide-friendly plastic bag with the olive oil and get all the air out of the bag by immersing it in water and sealing it up.

Pop your sous vide precision cooker into a large vessel of water and set the temperature for 131°F. Put the vacuum-bag-seasoned leg into the water. Sous vide for 22 hours.

When the 22 hours are up, you have two choices. If you are ready to roast and serve the leg of lamb, you can preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C and roast it to an internal temperature of about 130°F or 55°C for rare lamb or 145°F or 62.78°C for medium well. Cover with foil and rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

Or you can chill the leg of lamb, still in the sous vide bag, until you are ready to roast.

If you chose option two, chill the lamb in the refrigerator till ready to roast. Bring it closer to room temperature as you preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Roast the leg of lamb in your preheated oven until it is well browned and has an internal temperature of 130°F or 55°C for rare lamb or 145°F or 62.78°C for medium well. Cover with foil and rest before slicing.

Enjoy!

Welcome to another MultiCooker post! Check out all of the other alternative cooking method posts we are sharing today.

Pressure Cooker & Instant Pot Recipes:

• Instant Pot Carolina-Style Pulled Pork from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Instant Pot Orange Chicken from Making Miracles
• Pressure Cooker Carrot And Drumstick Sambar from Sneha's Recipe
• Thai Green Curry Mussels (Instant Pot) from Palatable Pastime

Slow Cooker Recipes:

• Maple & Honey Butter Crockpot Sweet Potatoes from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Slow Cooker Chicken Fajitas from A Day in the Life on the Farm

Sous Vide Recipes:

• Sous Vide Bone-in Leg of Lamb from Food Lust People Love
• Sous Vide Chicken from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking

Tell your friends about #MulticookerMonday! We post each month on the third Monday with trusted recipes for your favorite small appliances!

Multicooker Monday is a blogger group created by Sue of Palatable Pastime for all of us who need encouragement to make better use of our small appliances like slow cookers, Instant Pots, Air Fryers, rice cookers and sous vide machines. We get together every third Monday of the month to share our recipes. If you are a food blogger who would like to post with us, please request to join our Facebook group.

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Roast Leg of Lamb with Garlic and Rosemary

Still on the empty-the-freezer-before-moving program!  It’s Christmas Day in KL and I have prepared all the usual dishes including a roast turkey breast instead of a whole turkey, but we have been invited to a Boxing Day party at my lovely friend Katie’s house, so I am also seasoning and roasting a whole leg of lamb.  We were asked to bring Christmas leftovers so this doesn’t exactly qualify but I hope it will be welcome.

Ingredients

1 whole leg of lamb – ours is 5 lbs or 2.26 kg

4 sprigs of fresh rosemary

5-6 cloves of garlic

Sea salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

Method

Pull the leaves off the rosemary stalks and mince them.

Cut your garlic cloves in half so you have two wide pieces.  Cut these into long strips.

Add the garlic to the rosemary with several good grinds of fresh black pepper and about two teaspoons of flakey sea salt.   Moisten liberally with olive oil and mix.

Score the leg fat with a sharp knife.

Using a sharp, pointed paring knife, make holes in the lamb by inserting and twisting about every two inches or four centimeters. 

Open the holes further by sticking your index finger in them.

Insert a strip of garlic along with some rosemary, salt and pepper mixture in each hole.  Do this all over the leg.  Some holes will be deeper, some shallower.  Such is the nature of a leg of lamb with a bone. 

Rub any leftover seasonings all of the leg.  Add an extra couple of grinds of black pepper. 

If you are not roasting the lamb immediately, refrigerate it, covered until an hour or two before you are ready to cook it.   When you are ready to roast, take it out of the refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature or close.   Preheat your oven to 325°F or 165°C.

Add a cup of water to the pan and roast for about 1 hour 40 minutes to 2 hours 30 minutes, depending on how you like it done.   I find an instant read thermometer handy for this.  (Mine is quite simple, like the one in the link, but there are also thermometers that can be changed between Fahrenheit and Celsius.  (A quick web search in your country will give you a good idea of what is available.) Your internal temperature should be 140°F or 60°C for rare, 160°F or 71°C for medium and 170°F or 70°C for well done.  

Serve with gravy and mint sauce.  Merry Christmas!