Grilled Lamb Redefined - With Pictures!

After my great success with grilling chicken last week, I was inspired to try the same technique with a large piece of boneless leg of lamb. This is another cut that I've had issues in the past getting to turn out decent. Only this time I photo documented the whole process!

The Marinade

This is a major part of the revised process as historically my efforts in this regard have been fairly banal.

Start with a lot of salt and a lot of whole black and white peppercorns

 

 The rest of the ingredients - Large amounts of garlic, fresh rosemary and thyme, olive oil, and red wine

Using a heavy duty mortar and pestle beat these until the peppercorns substantially breakdown

 

 Add a lot of garlic and beat until paste like

(please note we follow the 'Grandparent Cooking Conventions' whereby our directions are 'a bit of this', 'work it until it feels right', 'how much? enough'. And for crying out loud, I gave you picture above.)

Add your Rosemary and Thyme

Now beat like a maniac because breaking these down is a Mother

Beat in gradually the olive oil and red wine

 Prepare your chunk 'o' meat by cutting across it checkerboard style. This will allow the meat to lay flat and thinner so it will cook faster. The slicing will expose more surface for the marinade to infuse flavor.

Rub the marinade into the meat. Really give it a massage.

 

 Put in the fridge overnight

Next morning take it out at least 3 to 4 hours before you grill it so it gets up to room temperature.

(If your meat is too cold it will have a hard time getting to the proper internal temperature without the outside being charred.)

Take off most of the marinade.

 

 Cook using our foil underneath to protect from charring and brick on the top to get as much surface are on the direct heat method.

It only required 14 minutes to get to 140/145 degrees internal temperature, a nice medium rare.

 There was a nice char on the outside and great flavor throughout.

 So get your mortar and pestle, your brick and your foil and tackle those larger cuts of meat.

(And yes for certain relatives, I bet if you took a block of tofu, marinaded it thus, grilled in on a thick layer of foil with a brick on top it would come up pretty damn good.)