In our first year married, my husband Kosta bought me a large terracotta clay pot from Greece, perfect for cooking lamb. A decade later and I have got the technique for slow cooked lamb that simply falls apart just about right – the two secrets are cooking at a low temperature, and adding minimal liquid to the pot.
Slow roasted Greek lamb
Ingredients
- 1 kg Lamb shoulder
- 8 Garlic cloves peeled 6 Springs of rosemary, leaves only
- 1 tsp Sofia’s chilli puree see my basic recipes page
- 50 ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 2 tbsp Greek Rigani dried oregano
- 25 ml Greek wine vinegar
- Sea salt and black pepper to
- 1 Lemon sliced to serve
Instructions
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Make sure the lamb is at room temperature, before starting this recipe. Remove the lamb from the refrigerator at least 20 minutes before starting this recipe.
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Preheat a fan-forced oven to 170C (or 190C conventional). Grind salt and pepper, garlic and rosemary in a mortar and pestle (or food processor) to a rough paste. Add olive oil, red wine vinegar and rigani to the paste and mix well.
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Rub marinade into meat and place lamb in a clay pot or baking dish that has a lid. Cover with foil, add lid and bake for 1 hour.
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At the 1 hour mark, remove the lid, peel back the foil - check the lamb and remove any excess liquid in the pot. Recover with the pot with foil, add the lid and cook for a further hour.
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At 2 hours, remove the lid and foil, and turn on oven grill. Brown meat for 3-5 minutes until crispy on top.
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Let the lamb rest for about 15min, covered loosely with foil before serving. I know, it’s hard to wait but the resting time as it will let all of the juices to diffuse into the meat making it more flavoursome.
I’ve always wanted to learn how to cook in one of those traditional clay pots. The lamb that I have had that has been cooked that way has been unsurpassed! I’ll have to bring one back from Greece some day.