Easter Leg (boneless) of Lamb

Easter time and my wife's favorite food is leg of lamb. We went with a boneless leg and for today's eggventure we took the recipe straight from the big green egg's web-site and followed it to the T. As usual we purchased the boneless leg from Costco. It was a nice 5 lb leg.

The recipe called for a paste made of flour, salt, marjoram, thyme, sage, pepper, garlic, ginger and olive oil. Mixed together the paste, instead of using a garlic mincer I used a microphone greater to help the garlic mix into the paste better. I then coated the inside of the leg with half of the paste/rub, folded up and used some cooking bands to essentially tying up the roast. I left the roast in the fridge for a couple hours to let the seasonings add some flavoring.

When it was time to get ready I fired up the big green egg with the plate setter in, legs up to 350 degrees. Put the roast on the grill rack and left it for an 75 minutes until it hit an internal temperature of 140 degrees.

Once the leg of lamb was ready I took it off and wrapped in foil for a good 15 to 20 minute rest. After that nice long rest we sliced it up in 1/4 to 1/2 slices and put it out to serve. The lamb was great. The combo of spices mixed in well and the lamb was cooked just right. Everyone that had some thought it tasted great.

Lessons Learned: Not a lot with this one. The lamb turned out great and tasted wonderful. I mistakenly cut two of the bands, so I should be more careful, but I did get the other 3 back to re-use. I can't say how easy these bands were versus trying to figure out the right way to tie up a roast, I'd definitely recommend them. They can be found at Amazon with the link below:



Next up... Not sure, but in two weeks I'm going to do a rib tasting of various rubs to start trying to figure out what I like best. Planning to do 5 racks with 5 different rubs.

Leg Of Lamb

My first steak on the Big Green Egg

Unfortunately I was too wrapped up in searing my first steak that I forgot to take pictures.

There was a sale on dry aged rib eyes at the local grocery store (Byerly's). They always have the best meat when it's on sale and affordable.

I picked up 4 Choice rib-eyes a little less then a pound each. Took the meat out of the fridge about an hour in advance to let everything get to room temperature.

I decided to use the simple technique recommended on the Big Green Egg web-site for rib-eyes. Set the egg up to 650 degrees for a nice hot sear. I was amazed at how fast the egg was able to get up to that temperature (about 20 minutes with two starter cubes).

When everything was ready I put the steaks on closed the lid and waited 2 minutes. Flipped the steaks over for another 2 minutes. One more flip and closed the top and bottom air vents and let the steaks "cook" for another 2 minutes. That was it. Pulled them off, let them sit for 5 minutes and they were ready to go..

The steaks tasted wonderful.. with the exception of that was thinner then the others, it cooked to a more medium-well, which is too cooked for my liking, but nobody complained.

Lessons Learned: What the thickness of the steaks.. This one seems obvious after the fact, I should have caught it before hand, but I didn't. Also don't get so caught up in the cooking that you forget to take pictures..

Next up: Boneless Leg of Lamb for Easter

Pork Tenderloin - Take 2

With 3 pork tenderloins in the freezer, no reason not to cook a couple more. This time we had a guest over, so we thought we'd try the chili rubbed pork tenderloin with blackberry sauce from the Big Green Egg Cook Book

The Recipe calls for 2 pork tenderloins, rubbed in 1 tbls of chili powder, salt and pepper. The pork wasn't 100% unfrozen yet, so I put the rub on a little early and let them thaw on the counter. The turned a nice dark red color as the chili powder soaked in.

While the tenderloins were thawing I made the black berry preserves. This was a little bit of an adventure, but it seemed to turn out alright in the end. The instructions said to melt sugar in a small sauce pan on the stove and caramelize. Once caramelized pour in blackberry preserves, balsamic vinegar and chicken stock. But when I poured in the liquid the caramelized sugar instantly hardened and turned into a candy like substance. Maybe it's supposed to do this, maybe not, but after some stirring and boiling then hardened sugar eventually melted back in. But it had me worried there for a little bit.

This recipe called for the tenderloin to be cooked over direct heat around 400 degrees. So I fired up the big green egg, plate setter removed and got it going. Yesterday was quite windy, so no issue with getting the egg up to temperature. 15 minutes in I was ready to go.

Put the tenderloin on for 5 minutes, then flipped as the recipe asked. My thermometer read 155, so I took it off, let rest for 5 minutes in tin foil and started to slice it up. A little too rare for my liking, so I threw it back on the egg for 5 more minutes. The thermometer was reading 200, which has me a bit worried, because there is no way that the meet was 200.

Second time off the BGE and it was just right. A little taste of the meat on the cutting board and the chili powder was overpowering and a little spicier then I had expected. When I served it with the black berry sauce though, the tastes complimented each other really well. I don't think I would have liked the pork without the black berry sauce.

Lessons learned tonight: Need to figure out how to deal with bowling sugar and cold liquids, half the recipe for the blackberry sauce (had way too much of it leftover) and look at calibrating my thermometer or look for a better placement in the meat. Something was off.

Today's upcoming adventure. Ribs.. using a carribean glaze recipe I received from Weber's cook book.