Boneless Leg of Lamb makes this classic spring roast even easier

Rosemary, thyme and loads of garlic flavor this traditional (and boneless) roast leg of lamb. Recipe below.

LAMB IS A YEAR-ROUND FAVORITE WITH US, in all its forms. But in the spring, what we really want is leg of lamb. There is just something celebratory and spring-welcoming about roasting this big joint of meat, its aroma filling the house, then carving and sharing it with others. Even though it’s just the two of us now, we couldn’t resist making leg of lamb this year.

This year’s model is boneless. Although we’ve roasted many legs of lamb over the years, this was our first boneless one. We’re big fans of bone-in cuts of meat generally—the bone often adds to the flavor of the finished dish. But one of the less fun things about roasting a leg of lamb is carving around the sizeable, oddly shaped bone. While the boneless version isn’t one solid piece of meat, it is tightly rolled and wrapped in an oven-safe mesh netting or string to help it keep its shape. (If you’re grilling it, you remove the netting or string before cooking.) And a 5- to 6-pound leg of lamb is all meat.

Bone-in or boneless, a leg of lamb is as forgiving in cooking as it is impressive to serve. The lamb itself is so delicious, whatever you do to it with seasonings and however you cook it, it is probably going to be really, really good. Popular flavoring choices, for good reason, are garlic (lots of it), rosemary and thyme. We also added some Dijon mustard to ours; it disappeared into the meat with no mustardy tang, just upping the overall umami and goodness.

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Roast Boneless Leg of Lamb

Using a boneless leg of lamb makes this classic spring meal even easier.

Course Main Course

Cuisine French-inspired

Ingredients

• 1 boneless leg of lamb, 5 – 6 pounds
• 3 large cloves garlic, divided
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (see Kitchen Notes)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary (or 1 tablespoon dried)
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1-1/2 teaspoons dry)

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375ºF. Leaving the leg of lamb in its mesh netting or string, blot it dry with paper towels. Turn the leg fat side up. Peel 2 cloves of the garlic and slice into slivers. Using a sharp knife, poke shallow holes into the lamb and insert garlic slivers. Turning the knife after inserting it will make putting the garlic slivers in place easier. Evenly space them; you want about 20 or so slivers overall.
• Season the lamb generously with salt and pepper on both sides. Mince the remaining clove of garlic. In a small bowl mix the Dijon mustard, olive oil, garlic, rosemary and thyme. Using your hands, spread it all over the lamb.
• Place the leg of lamb on a rack in a roasting pan, fat (and garlic slivers) side up. Place in the oven. NOTE: Set the oven rack so that the lamb is centered vertically in the oven, so it will cook evenly.
• Roast lamb to desired doneness. For medium-rare, check at about 1 hour 15 minutes, but you will likely need about 1-1/2 hours. Internal temperature (with an instant read thermometer inserted well into the roast) should be about 130 – 135ºF. For medium, you want 140 – 145ºF; for well done, 150 – 155ºF.
• Remove lamb from oven and let rest 10 minutes. Cut away the netting or string, then carve and serve.

Kitchen Notes

Instead of Dijon? The mustard really does disappear into the roast with no mustardy tang, just upping the overall umami and goodness. But you can also substitute 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.

Liz’s Crockery Corner. Marion here. This big, handsome transferware plate in the Chinese Villa pattern was made by Elkin & Newbon some time in the late 1840s. We wrote about that short-lived pottery the other day—among the disorganized, amusing, irritating things about the company was that, for the short period of time when it was a functioning entity, it operated under several slightly different names. I surmise it depended on who was minding the store at the moment.

There’s a website called The Potteries which, for lovers of English ceramics, is a goldmine of information on things like owners, marks, dates and patterns. I usually look at it a lot when I am trying to date a dish or find out about a pattern. Among the many kinds of data the site includes is information on the number of workers employed at each of the historic potteries. At its peak, Elkin & Newbon employed 40 men, 15 women, 30 boys and 25 girls. 

Yes. Half the workers at this pottery were children, and this was a typical proportion across the potteries (and throughout 18th and 19th century British industry). At the time this plate was made, children in the potteries worked every day except Sunday, for 11 or 12 hours a day, and were paid 2 shillings a week. The one positive thing to be said about their lives was that the conditions they worked under were... not as fully atrocious as those for children working in the coal mines and textile mills, who often were dead before they turned 25. To sum up an enormous body of work, putting an end to this—ensuring that all children attended school and forbidding industries from hiring the young—was a grim and slow process and took all of the 19th century. And, to be clear, in the United States, this reform movement started later and took a lot longer.