Lamb leg in puff pastry. Stuffed lamb leg baked in dough - recipe with step by step photos

Roasted leg of lamb is delicious. And if you bake lamb in salt dough, the meat will turn out to be very spicy, deeply saturated with the aromas of herbs and garlic. We will prepare the dough - “sarcophagus”, then the lamb sauce, with which we will coat the meat on all sides, after which we will pack it in the dough and send it to the oven for an hour.

Ingredients

• leg of lamb 1.5-2 kg
• onion 1 pc.
• garlic 4-6 cloves
• vegetable oil
• a piece of white bread 100-150 g
• fine salt 1 tbsp.
• coarse salt 1 tbsp.
• wheat flour 3 tbsp.
• dry rosemary
• dry oregano
• sage
• fennel
• egg white 2 pcs.

How to cook lamb baked in salt dough

Using a sharp knife, carefully cut out the bone to form a sheet of meat.

Preparation of the dough-sarcophagus. Take a wide bowl, pour coarse and fine salt.

Pour, without sifting, wheat flour.

Add a pinch of each dry herb or a chopped sprig of fresh herb.
Separate the yolks from the whites. Put the egg whites in a bowl and start kneading the dough with a spoon.

Slowly add water to the dough. Continuing to use the spoon first, and then knead the dough with your hands.

In the end it will salty dough, which will perfectly keep the temperature in the oven and baked at the expense of proteins, flour and salt. It is clear that such dough is not eaten, because there is too much salt in it, but the sarcophagus for meat turns out to be wonderful.

Wrap the dough in cling film and set it aside.

Preparing the Lamb Sauce. Turn on the oven to heat up (up to 190 degrees). Now prepare the “stuffing” for the dough, the lamb itself. Lamb goes very well with onions and garlic. Peel them, cut them in any way and lightly fry in vegetable oil.

Take a piece of white bread, break it into pieces, send it to the blender bowl, send a few sun-dried tomatoes there.

Add onion and garlic to them.

Turn all the ingredients into a paste.

Lamb leg, already boneless, grease with the resulting gruel, put a few more sun-dried tomatoes. Leave a part of the “porridge”, spread it over the meat on top after you roll it up.

Tie the meat with kitchen string.

"Sealing" lamb in the dough. Sprinkle a little flour on the work surface, roll out the dough so that you have enough to “swaddle” the lamb.

Place the meat on the dough.

Carefully and quickly wrap the meat in the dough, as in a cocoon. If the dough breaks in some place, be sure to blind it whole.

Line a baking sheet with foil or parchment and place the wrapped meat on it. Put in the oven: while the dough is baking, the meat will languish in it. It takes about an hour to roast lamb in the oven.

How to determine readiness? Firstly, the dough will pierce well without leaving marks. In addition, the readiness of baked meat is determined by the color of the juice that flows from it. It must be transparent. Experienced cooks determine the finished baked lamb (and other meat) by the smell and color of the crust.

After removing the meat in the dough from the oven, let it rest for 30 minutes.

Break up the rind with a chopping mallet.

Remove the lamb from the crust completely, cut off all the threads.

Lamb should be cut just before serving. Lamb goes well with fresh vegetables, tomato sauce and tkemali.

Nastya came to Moscow, had an internship in one of the restaurants, and after the internship she had a few free days left. We invited Nastya to visit us, but she is a serious girl, she came with her own set of knives, salt and peppers.
What was I to do, if not give her a leg of lamb for fun?

I went to cook pilaf with chanterelles and stuffed chickens, and Nastya took a bone out of the leg, cut it up and set aside some of the scraps for making the sauce.

Bones and trimmings were fried in a small amount of vegetable oil.

When the bones were properly reddened, a glass of water was added to them.

When the water evaporated, another glass of water was added.

Nastya cut some onions and carrots.

Nastya also kneaded the dough.

Nastya fried chicken liver in vegetable oil with dry herbs.

The liver was filled with Madeira.

They let it fade.

And evaporated almost to dryness.

The leg was stuffed with cookies.

The incisions and cavities were stitched and tied.

The leg was salted, peppered, smeared butter and baked for 15 minutes at 250C.

In the meantime, Nastya rolled out part of the dough, and from part of the dough she twisted bundles for decoration.

The leg was allowed to cool slightly and wrapped in dough.
The dough was smeared with egg yolk diluted with warm water.

Decorated with ropes and put in the oven again, where it was baked until cooked at a temperature of 170-180C.

Well, here it is! Everything worked out!

It is not necessary to serve immediately - let it stand under a napkin.

We cut into slices.

So we got to the filling!

Did you forget the sauce?

I almost forgot where I saw this. There was something familiar about this recipe.
Well, yes, I prepared something similar for my second book more than three years ago, but was it really the leg that was baked in the dough? Do not remind?
And while I repeat my old recipe so that you can compare the French classics and what could decorate the Central Asian dastarkhan.

First, you should remove from the leg that vein that I told you about in the chapter on butchering meat. Well, nothing that the integrity of the leg will be violated! But we can at the same time remove at least part of the films from the exposed muscles and remove the femur. Why is she in our baked leg? To nothing.
Secondly, do you know that many cooks stuff meat with bacon, carrots and garlic before baking? They do it so that the meat becomes juicier from fat, and from carrots and garlic it acquires an additional aroma and taste. At the same time, during stuffing, salt and pepper are put inside the meat - after all, if you salt such a large piece of meat only on the outside, it will still remain fresh inside.
And here - see for yourself, inside the leg there is an excellent, spacious cavity, which just asks to be stuffed. And if you stuff it wisely, then you can solve all those issues that other chefs solve by stuffing, only even better - because we will not have punctures in the meat and the juice will not flow out anywhere!
In principle, there can be as many options for minced meat for a leg. Just let's refrain from stuffing with rice or some other cereals that will absorb meat juices - we still need juices. On the contrary, it is necessary to make sure that the minced meat saturates the baked meat with juices and its taste.
Apples and mint, quince and raisins - that just does not ask for this stuffing! But let's start with the simplest. Here are onions, carrots and tomatoes - a very characteristic combination for Uzbek cuisine. Great, just let's add some more fat. Moreover, on the outside of the leg it is necessary to cut off all excess fat. Just do not take the word "superfluous" as a call to remove fat completely. No - there must be some left! It will protect the meat from drying out and make it juicier, and the taste of meat baked under lard will be richer, more pronounced and more silky.

Let's get back to mince. Put the bacon cut into small pieces in the pan and wait until enough fat is melted out of it so that you can start frying the onion. The fat itself should not be brought to the state of cracklings and it should not be removed from the minced meat - let it remain. When the onion begins to turn golden, add the carrots. Sprinkle with salt and seasonings and wait until the carrots begin to smell like pilaf. Add skinned tomatoes or tomato puree, let sauté until the smell of raw tomatoes disappears, then add a little broth or boiling water to the pan. Let it stew, check for salt, and if the minced meat has become too sour from tomatoes, correct the taste with sugar.

Judge for yourself - if you try to put this stuffing inside your legs while hot, it will turn out badly - everything will flow. Let's do it differently, let's cool this stuffing until the juices and fat inside it freeze. Now this minced meat fits perfectly inside the leg and it remains only to bandage it so that the minced meat is inside. You can also sew the edges with a thread, but it is still better to tie the leg before baking so that it does not change its shape during cooking.

That's it, you can hang your leg in the tandoor, or you can put it on the grate in the oven. Under the leg in both cases, put a bowl with chopped vegetables and pour boiling water into it, and salt.
During cooking, the boiling water will evaporate. Since the walls of the oven or tandoor are very hot, the steam will not condense on them. But the leg itself is just quite cold and the steam will condense on it, preventing it from drying out. If juices begin to drain from the leg or fat drips, then everything will fall into a bowl with vegetables. As a result, a wonderful tasting broth is formed in the vessel, a broth that has the taste of baked products. Well, since there are also vegetables, then this is not just a broth - this is already a tandoor-shurpa!
Start cooking the leg should be at a temperature of 180 degrees. It will take 1.5-2 hours to cook it, it depends on its size. During cooking, the temperature should be lowered. If you are cooking such a leg not in a tandoor, but in a conventional oven, then maybe at the very end, for a short time, it is worth turning on the upper grill to let the leg turn beautifully golden? By the way, it’s also better to put shurpa under the grill for a few minutes, let it be clearly seen that this is not just soup, but baked soup!

I invite you to visit me for a festive dinner in a village located at an altitude of 1300 meters, which is 1258 years old and has a population of approximately 800 inhabitants. In Switzerland, holidays associated with major religious days, such as Christmas, Easter, and the feasts of saints, whose names are local churches, are celebrated in the first place.

We have a church named after St. Peter and Paul. First, the inhabitants dress up in the newest and most fashionable clothes and go to the festive mass in the church. Then they parade from the church to the open field: priests and church ministers, young unmarried girls carry the image of the Mother of God, a church choir with a flag, consisting of local residents, the church community carries a canopy and the flag of the church.

The local society of "Young and Unmarried" is marching, dressed in the uniform of the times of the French Revolution with carbines and holding 5 flags. Priests illuminate everyone and everything around. The procession is accompanied by the brass music of the local orchestra. Traditionally, relatives and friends are invited to a festive meal.

Lunch is always meat dishes, cheeses and noble wines or traditional schnapps. There is a popular saying in the villages: "What the farmer does not know, he does not eat." Based on this, the housewives always cooked what they grew. Your meat, your cheese, your bread. And today we will taste a lamb dish with wild garlic and cottage cheese, baked in bread dough with rosemary. Happy tasting everyone!

A leg of lamb baked in the oven can rightfully be called not ordinary, festive dish. However, it will turn out tasty and nutritious only if the hostess fully follows the recipe and takes into account all the subtleties of baking. How to cook a leg of lamb in the oven correctly?

Learning to choose lamb

Since ancient times, lamb has been considered a delicacy of exclusively oriental cuisine. But gradually this type of meat is also mastering the western territories. Buying lamb in the store today is not a problem.

It is considered fatty, high-calorie meat, therefore, of the whole carcass, the leg of lamb is best suited for consumption: it has the least fat. When purchasing this part, you should pay attention to the color of the fat layer. It is easy to determine the freshness of the product. If the fat is light, almost white, the meat is suitable for baking. If the fat has acquired a rich yellow tint, the meat has been on the counter for a long time, and the dish from it will turn out to be tasteless due to the pungent smell.

To make the leg of lamb baked in the oven perfectly tasty, follow some secrets of oriental culinary specialists.

What are the subtleties?

• Get a leg of milk lamb. It makes the most worthy dish. In modern conditions, it is very difficult to make such a purchase, since the carcass of a young lamb is a rarity. You can recognize such meat by the light shade of muscle veins and fat. The animal must be no more than 18 months old, otherwise the meat will be old and tough.
• Before cooking, rinse the meat with hot water so that fat is washed off its surface, and remove excess fat with a knife. But a slight layer of fat should still remain on the leg, which will protect the dish from dryness during cooking. Great solution will bake the leg and foil or sleeve so that it cooks in its own juice.
• Do not make punctures in lamb before sending it to the oven or during baking. Thanks to this, the juice will remain inside, and the meat will turn out juicy.
• You can calculate the cooking time by the weight of the lamb. It takes 40 minutes to bake 1 kg of meat. The thickest piece is placed in the hottest part of the oven.
• The spice of rosemary, which has an unsurpassed light smell, allows you to refresh the heavy taste of lamb. It can be used both fresh and dry.
• After cooking, do not rush to remove the meat and cut it. Let it stand in the oven for 20 minutes - it will soak up to the maximum own juice, will be juicy and fragrant.

How to prepare meat for roasting?

Before you start cooking, the meat must be carefully prepared. In addition to washing under hot water, you will need to separate the fat and veins on the carcass. It is they who give the lamb a specific smell.

If you often cook lamb, get a wide knife with a very sharp edge. Gently slide it under the fat layer and cut until the fat begins to separate. Pick up the "surplus" with your hand and remove, helping yourself with a knife. Try not to cut the meat.

As already mentioned, it is not recommended to make punctures on a fresh ram carcass before sending it to the oven. However, if you like spices, you can cut the meat lightly and add rosemary sprigs. When using dry herbs, it will be enough to rub the carcass with them. Thyme, mustard, oregano, basil, lemon juice or zest will also work.

Leg of lamb in the oven. Recipe with photo

Ingredients:

• leg of a young lamb;
• vegetable oil (preferably olive) - 1 tbsp. l.;
• a little lemon zest;
• garlic - a few cloves;
• rosemary.

Cooking:

Lamb leg baked in the oven in the sleeve

The roasting sleeve makes the lamb more juicy and tender. For this dish, a marinade based on olive oil is required.

Ingredients:

• mutton;
• vegetable oil (preferably olive);
• grain mustard - 1 tbsp. l.;
• garlic - 4-5 cloves;
• wine vinegar - 1-1.5 tbsp. l.;
• dried herbs;
• soy sauce, salt - to taste.

Cooking:

Lamb baked in dough

Ingredients:

• lamb - 1.5 kg;
• butter - 50 g;
• spices - thyme, basil, oregano;
• garlic - 2 cloves;
• lemon juice - 3 tsp;
• egg -1 pc.;
• salt.

For test:

• butter - 1 pack;
• flour - 0.5 kg;
• water - 1 tbsp.

Cooking:

What to serve lamb with?

Not every side dish is suitable for lamb. The ideal addition would be boiled rice, which absorbs fat well and does not leave a feeling of heaviness in the stomach. The same can be said about stewed vegetables. They can be laid out in a form next to the leg of lamb while baking, so that the vegetables are soaked. meat juice and absorb excess fat.

A less suitable but still acceptable side dish is potatoes. It can also be baked in the oven along with meat. However, it is worth considering that potatoes and lamb are two foods that are hard to digest, so the dish will turn out to be very satisfying.

When serving lamb, do not forget about fresh herbs and vegetables. They will promote the digestion of meat and add notes of freshness. festive table. A bone that spoils the picture somewhat can be wrapped with paper or foil.

A well-turned lamb leg baked in the oven will do honor to any hostess. Pay attention to the preparation of meat and do not neglect the nuances. Only in this case you will achieve a truly amazing taste.