One Pot Roast Leg of Lamb

Springtime will always remind me of our last trip to the UK.  We were there for a few weeks and enjoyed seeing spring come to life.  The flowers and gorgeous stone walls that lined the fields where the lambs grazed always makes me wonder why we are not living there.  In the UK lamb is so very easy to find.  Here in Rhode Island it is a little less so.  A lot less so actually.  And when you do find it, it is often quite expensive.  We were sort of delighted the other day when we found a leg of lamb for a really good price at our local market.  It was huge though so we knew we had to be smart about what we did with it so that we could utilize the extra meat for other dishes which we planned on making and freezing.

At our house there is a neat cook and a messy cook.  The neat cook likes to clean each dish as they go.  The messy cook just enjoys every single minute and sloshes everything around and piles up dirty dishes faster than the other can even fantasize about getting their hands on them to pop them in the dishwasher.  So when we decided to cook this huge leg of lamb visions of greasy messy pans were quickly making their way to my head.  That is when the brilliant one pot idea came to mind.  Everything goes in one roasting pot and the kitchen is a wee bit happier for it.  Or maybe I am a wee bit happier about it…

This dish began with veggie prep.  We wanted all of those yummy comfort food veggies that lead you from a cold winter day into the beginning of spring. Our roasting pan was drizzled with olive oil and lined with carrots, onions, leeks and potatoes.  A generous sprinkling of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper were added to the top.  We set this aside and began prepping the lamb.

We started by rubbing the leg with olive oil, salt and pepper.  The meat was then browned on each side before it was sprinkled with Herbs de Provence and rosemary.  We placed it in the pan with the veggies and then it was put into a 400 oven for about a half hour.  The temperature was then lowered to 350 where we left it to cook for an additional 2.5 hours.  The cooking times, of course, depend on the size of the leg of lamb you have.  During the last twenty minutes of cooking we basted our leg of lamb with a really good balsamic which ended up as a lovely, sticky glaze.

This meal was fabulous for a few reasons.  Not only did it make for easy clean up- it was absolutely delicious to eat.  The depth of flavor from the balsamic glaze put the comfort flavor in the comfort food aspect of this dinner.  The part we really loved was that it was gorgeous to look at.  The icing on the cake was that there was so much left over we were able to make loads of freezer meals for future nights.  Stay tuned!