Holiday Party - Leg of Lamb with Potatoes

I hosted the Christmas party for my family this year and made it pot luck. There was only the five of us so nothing too crazy but it was a fun time. I made leg of lamb.

One 4.5 lb leg of lamb (bone in)
some dried crushed rosemary
salt and pepper
three cloves of garlic.



This recipe that I found online was so easy, I figure it was the safe thing to do. I chopped up the garlic and mixed it in the rosemary, salt and pepper. Rubbed it all over the lamb and stabbed small slits in the lamb to push the garlic pieces in.



Then it was just the matter of cooking it. The recipe I found saids to cook it low and slow. 250 for four hours covered and 2 more uncovered. It is not going for medium rare. It is cooking it til it falls apart. I like this kind of cooking; it is kind of like the pulled pork and the lamb shank that I've cooked before. I like both of those.

After 6 hours of cooking the lamb and my condo is smelling delicious, tear the meat apart, rip the bones out, and let it sit. The lamb should be tender enough where you can use two forks and rip the meat apart. I actually cut them into slightly bigger than bite size pieces(chopstick friendly size) with my brand new kitchen shears because we are having it Chinese family style. The meat soak up some of the juice that the meat have sweated out. Moist meat is good.

It's time to make the potatoes.

5 small red potatoes
Lots of salt
Some dried rosemary
A little garlic powder (not pictured)
Enough olive oil to cover all the potatoes



I quartered (cut into fourths)the potatoes with my brand new santoku. Did I mention I bought a brand new knives set? It is sweet. The knife glided right through the potatoes with no effort. Best purchase of 2007 for me.

Throw the chopped potatoes in a baking pan and add the rest of the ingredients. I mixed it all up by hand make sure every pieces are covered. Bake the potatoes at 450 for 30 minutes, toss them a bit at 15 to make sure all sides get a bit of browning.

The lamb kind of cooled a bit so I put everything on the plate and put it all back into the oven a to keep warm as the oven cool back down from 450. About 10-15 minutes later, it was nice and warm and ready.



It was a pot luck and my parents brought sticky rice and Chinese broccoli. My brother brought desert, chocolate dipped strawberries. Dinner was awesome.



Happy Holidays!

-a