Garlic Stuffed Roast Shoulder of Lamb

Just because it’s summer that doesn’t mean I don’t want my Sunday roast dinner! Lamb is an amazing meat to roast and it would be a shame for it to be left out due to its season of availability. In light of this I’m going to simply roast a shoulder, for not very long, and serve it with roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and “proper” gravy!  

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  What you need:

  • A shoulder / half a shoulder of lamb, bone in
  • A bulb of garlic
  • As many potatoes as you want to eat – I used 4 medium maris piper for the 2 of us.
  • 2 eggs 
  • 55 g of flour 
  • 1 apple
  • 1 onion
  • 300 ml of chicken stock
  • 100 ml of milk

  
  

  How to cook it:

  
  

  1. Start by taking a sharp knife and cutting a hole into the meat. Stuff a peeled garlic clove into this hole, repeating the process until you run out of garlic. (Try to make the garlic cloves evenly spaced across the meat preventing garlic overload for one person).  Chop your apple and onion into large chunks and use this as a trivet for your lamb. Finally add 150 ml of water into the tray; this prevents the apple and onion burning.    
  2. Place you meat in a 220 ^oC pre heated oven and then turn the temperature down to 140 ^oC. The cooking time is going to be dependent upon the size of the shoulder and which half you have. I used the arm section of the shoulder and this took 1.5 hours to cook. After an hour check the meat and keep checking every 15 minutes. You will know when it is cooked because the bone will be coming out of the meat, it will have a nice brown colour, and finally the meat will pull away easily. Do not overcook the lamb you still want a pink colour inside. Don’t be scared to keep poking and prodding!
  3. While the meat is in the oven prep your potatoes. Don’t bother pealing them this is just a boring relentless task! Quarter medium sized potatoes - the more rustically the better - and put them into a pan of salted boiling water. Boil the spuds until you can put a blunt-ish knife into them easily, and once cooked drain. Allow all the water to evaporate off the potato; this will allow them to become crispier when roasted. When cooled put the potatoes into a roasting tray which has been pre heated in the oven with 1 cm depth of flavourless oil i.e. vegetable or sunflower. Ideally you want to take the lamb out of the oven and allow it to rest, before roasting the spuds at the higher temperature of 200 ^oC for 45 - 60 minutes (don’t forget you have to toss them once in a while - they are done when completely golden)
  4. For the Yorkshire puddings whisk together the eggs, flour salt and milk. Add the milk gradually (you may not need it all) until you achieve a single cream consistency. Let the batter sit for half an hour and don’t worry about too many lumps. In your Yorkshire pudding tins put 1tsp of your flavourless oil per well and pre heat in your hot oven. Take out your hot tray and fill the well until half full, (the raw batter should start to bubble). Repeat with all your pudding wells and place back in the oven and cook at 200 -220 ^oC for 15 -20 minutes. During cooking minimise the amount of times you open the oven door. Opening the door often leads to a diminished rise, which is bad!
  5. Finally and almost most importantly the gravy: take the resting juices of the meat and pour that into the apple and onion mush. Once you pour off any excess fat add your chicken stock and bring to the simmer. Sieve the gravy and pour it back in the pan and put it back on a moderate heat. Use 30 ml of your Yorkshire pudding batter to thicken the gravy stirring constantly. If the gravy gets too thick add a bit of water to loosen it off again.
     Done.