Roasted Leg of Lamb:

It’s Easter and for me that means an amazing lamb recipe. My roasted marinated leg of lamb with fresh thyme is a family’s favorite. Here’s how you do it.

We’ll going to start with a seven and a half pound leg of a lamb, look at how gorgeous that is. What I'm going to do is just put together a very simple assembly of nice clean flavors to marinate the leg of the lamb. Then we’ll put it to bed for a little while, comeback to it later and roast it off.

We’re going to start with some smooth mustard. I would say a few tablespoon is fine and about a cup of white wine, preferably a dry wine, and look if you have a little bit of wine left over in the door of your fridge from the last time you drunk three quarters of a bottle. Feel free to whisk that in. Now I want to add a little bit of aromatic thyme and just a flake, some fresh thyme leaves in there, tiny pinch of salt, just to kind of make sure it’s awake and a good amount of black pepper that I really like to grate fresh, couple of garlic cloves.

In this case for the marinade, let’s leave it nice and simple and just crack them open a little bit on the cutting board so the juices start to escape and toss that right into the marinade. Now, when I'm handling a large cut of meat like this in the kitchen, I always designate one kitchen towel and that’s what I use to handle the leg of lam. So here I just grab it and I just pour that lovely marinade right over that. We’re just going to refrigerate this for a couple of hours just to let those flavors infuse.

The longer it marinates the better. And every once in a while, I'm going to come by with my handy towel and just flip it, to make sure that it constantly coated with the marinade and constantly being rotated in the refrigerator as that will really yield the best results.

So here’s are beautiful marinated leg of lamb and I'm just going to add a nice sprinkle of see salt and some olive oil right on top that. Put it right into that pan, fat side up to protect it and get that nice crispy skin while it cooks.

Wow! Look at that and I cook this to 130 which is medium rare. I when it rasps and all the juices flow through, it’s going to be beautifully pink and red. Now I’m going to make the gravy right in the pan. I'm going to take the marinade that I had from before that I reserved. Add it to the pan and just bring it up to a boil. Add a splash of dried sherry. Now I’m going to add just one last touch. Just a whisper more of smooth mustard and I love mustard because it has a natural thickener, lecithin. It’s much better than using flour or anything else to thicken which make sauces so heavy I think.

Take that and just pour it right over that. Look at that it’s just gorgeous. In my house growing up, no one is allowed to cut the lamb except my father. So he would come to the table with a large knife and his sharpener and we’d just bring it out whole like this and a hush would fall over the room. So I suggest you try the same. Pull down the shades, disconnect your phones and enjoy your Easter.