Good food can be surprisingly easy to prepare, especially if you have sous-vide equipment at your disposal. You could also make this with a regular oven though, but you’ll have to pay more attention to getting the meat cooked just right. Lamb is one of my favorite meats, with rack of lamb one of my favorite cuts. Leg of lamb can be cooked whole, but you can also cook a slice of leg of lamb as a steak. Here I am serving it with a red wine demi-glace sauce. Assuming that you already have the lamb demi-glace, there isn’t a whole lot to it. Just cook the meat sous-vide, sear it, and deglaze the pan to make the sauce. Here’s what I did.
Ingredients
2 leg of lamb steaks
olive oil
fresh thyme
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf
120 ml (1/2 cup) of red wine, preferably the wine you will serve with the dish
60 ml (1/4 cup) lamb demi-glace (which is lamb stock, simmered down to a fraction of its original volume until thick and syrupy; I keep it frozen in cubes)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preparation
Season the lamb steaks with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Vacuum seal them with some fresh thyme and cook sous-vide for 2 hours at 55C/131F.
Pat the lamb dry with paper towels.
Heat some olive oil (or clarified butter) in a frying pan and quickly brown the lamb on both sides over very high heat, about 1 minute per side.
Wrap the lamb in aluminum foil to keep it warm while you finish the sauce.
Lower the heat and sauté the garlic, thyme and bay leaf in the fat remaining in the pan until the garlic is golden and fragrant.
Deglaze the pan with the red wine.
Add the lamb demi glace as well.
Simmer this until reduced quite a bit.
Filter out the herbs and garlic.
Return the sauce to the pan and simmer some more until thick and syrupy.
Serve the lamb on warm plates with the sauce.
Wine pairing
This is good with many red wines. A lot of lamb is eaten in the Italian region of Abruzzo, and there the wine to drink with the lamb is Montepulciano di Abruzzo. We certainly enjoyed it with the lamb.
This will be next on my list!
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🙂
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Did you butcher the lamb steaks from a leg yourself? I love roast leg of lamb but it is usually too much for my wife and me. I am thinking of buying a leg and cutting some thick steaks with bone from the meatier portion of the lower leg, using the upper portion around the ‘H’ bone for cubed meat preparations and having a shank to play with as well! BTW … have you ever butterflied a lamb leg?
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The butcher does all of this for me. I’ve seen him butterflying a leg of lamb quite often, and it’s not something I think I’ll be good at.
Sounds like a good plan though to use a leg of lamb that way.
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P.S. You could use the bone to make lamb stock as well 🙂
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Ditto – leg of lamb does it for me – it’s kind of sweet and tender (if you cook it right which obviously you can with that contraption of yours!)
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🙂
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This looks amazing. I love the sauce.
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Thanks 🙂
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I agree, Stefan. Lamb is a favorite of mine, too. You’ve prepared a fantastic dish, that sauce being an incredible accompaniment. You ate very well that night. 🙂
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Thanks, John. I try to eat well every night 😉
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This sounded so good, So we made it the other night. And was absolutely delicious. Thanks do much for sharing. Simon
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