The baked leg of a young lamb is a traditional dish served for lunch on the day of the Holy Resurrection of the Lord in many countries of Western Europe. And such a ham looks much more magnificent than chicken or turkey. And his taste is simply unsurpassed.
How to cook this easter dish? After all, a large piece of meat, and even on the bone, requires a special approach. In this article we will tell you how to cook lamb ham in the oven. There are a lot of recipes for this dish. You can bake the whole ham or cut it into portioned “medallions”. Good recipes for cooking legs in foil or sleeve.
Let's look at the most popular cooking methods. But first, learn a few secrets to handling lamb. The taste of the dish will directly depend on this.
What you need to know before baking a ham
When cooking lamb, use the following tips:
- The meat of an old animal has a characteristic choke, which not everyone likes. Therefore, it is best to acquire the leg of a young lamb who has not reached the age of one and a half years. This meat is easily recognizable by its pink fibers and light fat.
- Before cutting, the leg should be washed with very hot water. She will wash off the excess fat, and the one that remains will be distributed in a thin and even layer over the entire surface. Therefore, the mutton ham baked in the oven does not dry out in its lower thin portion.
- Unlike pork, punctures in lamb meat should not be done. Many recipes suggest cooking ham in a sleeve or foil to preserve valuable juice.
- Lamb is unthinkable without seasonings and, in particular, fragrant herbs. The rosemary will be the faithful companion of the ham.
- Recipes give an approximate baking time in the oven. It all depends on the size and weight of the product. For each kilogram, forty minutes should be allocated and an additional quarter of an hour for the whole dish.
- When you take the ham out of the oven, do not rush to chop it right away. Let it stand for twenty minutes, so that the juice is evenly distributed inside the piece.
How to bake whole mutton ham in the oven
When preparing this dish, it is important to pay close attention to cutting the lamb leg:
- A piece of meat on the bone with my hot water.
- With a sharp knife, remove the tailbone.
- In the same way we get rid of the pelvic bones. Usually, a lamb leg is sold without them, but sharp fragments from the cabin can remain.
- Now we cut the meat along the knee. The cartilage that connects the large and small bones is exposed. We will carefully cut it from all sides.
- Now remove the small bone and the iron-rich pocket with fat, which is poorly digested in the stomach.
- You should also get rid of the upper layer of the skin. But you still do not need to completely expose the meat.
- Two or three branches of fresh rosemary swill, cut off the leaves from the stems. We clean the large head of garlic, cut each clove into slices. Turn on the oven 200 degrees.
- With the sharp end of the knife, we make several deep but small punctures in the leg of the lamb, into which we send rosemary and garlic.
- Rub ham with salt and black pepper. Put your foot in the frying pan and sprinkle its upper surface with a thin layer of brown sugar.
- Pour a glass of clean water.
- We cook for half an hour at 200 C, then reduce the temperature to 160 C. From time to time we water the mutton ham baked in the oven with the juice that has stood out.
Finnish recipe
For cooking, we will need more time, as we will grease the meat. Tuzluk do this:
- Boil 2 liters of water, cool it slightly so that it is still hot, dissolve two glasses of salt in it, a soup spoon of sugar and a teaspoon of saltpeter.
- In this brine, we send a lamb ham for two to three days. Turn the meat from time to time.
- At the end of the term, we take it out, wipe it with a towel and put it in a thick-walled pan, stew-pan or gooseberry. Cover the dishes.
- Preheat the oven to 120 degrees. Cook in this way for at least four hours.
- After that, you need to free the baked mutton ham in the oven from the resulting crust.
The recipe, as you see, does not use any spices and herbs. Finns serve fragrant sauces for such meat.
Cooking in foil
Cut the meat into “medallions”. Let's prepare the marinade for which you need to mix:
- half a glass of soy sauce;
- four tablespoons of balsamic vinegar;
- salt of one lemon;
- salt;
- spices (provence herbs, zira, a mixture of peppers, dried garlic or savory).
Next, proceed as follows:
- Pour the marinade into a dense cellophane bag, put the “medallions” there and seal it well. We send soaked in spices in the refrigerator for the night (10-12 hours).
- After that, preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
- We wrap each medallion in a piece of foil. We make a small hole in the aluminum for the exit of steam.
- Baked lamb ham in foil in the oven should be cooked for at least 70 minutes.
- After that, you need to deploy it. Throw the foil, and send the meat to get a beautiful appetizing crust. You can even slightly increase the temperature in the oven.
This dish is traditionally served with sour cream and garlic sauce.
Lamb ham baked in the oven in the sleeve
This method looks like this:
- Four to five cloves of garlic cut “wedges”. We push them with a knife deep into the lamb ham.
- Two onions shred in half rings, pour into a bowl. We wrinkle a little with our hands, chopping a few bay leaves there and pour with vinegar or lemon juice.
- In another bowl, pour half a glass of vegetable oil. In it sprinkle spices. Black pepper, paprika and coriander are a must. If desired, thyme, basil, savory, rosemary can be added to the spice mixture. Salt and stir well.
- We rub the whole mutton ham with aromatic vegetable oil. Baked in the oven, it will absorb all these incense.
- First send the bow to the sleeve. Then we put the meat there. And in the end, if left, oil.
- Tie the sleeve tightly. If it does not have factory openings, we make one or two punctures on the top of the bag. This is necessary for the release of steam.
- Preheat the oven to 180 C. There, the meat should be cooked for two and a half hours.
- After that, cut the bag, pour over the juice and put it on until the crust is brown for another 30 minutes.
Lamb ham on the grill
Here is another great recipe:
- Rub the leg with aromatic vegetable oil, as in the previous recipe (however, include 10 cloves of finely chopped garlic in the spice mixture).
- Wrap it in a bag and send it in the refrigerator for the night.
- After that, let the leg stand for another hour at room temperature.
- Preheat the oven to 230 degrees. We install a wire rack on top and a baking sheet under it. Pour one and a half glasses of white table wine into the lower tank - it will give the mutton ham, baked in the oven, an indescribably luxurious aroma.
- Cook in high heat for 10 minutes.
- Turn the piece over. We wait another 10 minutes, after which we lower the temperature to 180 degrees.
- We clean and wash the potatoes for a side dish. Cut it into thin circles. Now we no longer have wine in the pan - it has evaporated. But there is mutton fat. In it we will put potato mugs.
Ham with vegetables
With vegetables, this dish will be no less tasty:
- We stuff the prepared leg with rosemary needles and garlic, sodium salt and black pepper. Send to the refrigerator for at least two hours.
- In a heat-resistant form, put the vegetables. This can be coarsely chopped carrots, eggplant, zucchini, jacket potatoes.
- Salt the vegetables, grease them with olive oil. Let’s put the mutton ham on top.
- First, preheat the oven to 200-220 degrees so that the meat is “sealed” and the juice does not leak.
- Then you should lower the temperature to 160 degrees. So you need to simmer the dish for more than an hour.
Greek recipe
In Greece, ham is prepared like this:
- In three tablespoons of olive oil we mix the garlic (4-5 cloves) squeezed through a press, salt, a soup spoon of Provence herbs, and other spices to taste.
- Cut out all the bones from the ham. Rub the meat with aromatic oil. We turn it into a compact piece and knit it with twine.
- Put in a refractory form and bake for 20 minutes at 220 degrees.
- Then reduce the temperature to 160 C and bake for more than an hour.
- Cover the lamb ham in the oven with foil and give 10 minutes to rest.
- In 200 grams of Greek yogurt without additives, we crumble 150 g of feta. Flavor the sauce with lemon juice, add a few sprigs of parsley. Stir.
Serve the meat by pouring the sauce.