Cut: Easy carve lamb leg Lamb Ham

  • Meat Lamb
  • Cut Leg

Corned legs used to known as the poor mans ham, how the tables have turned. Try this recipe and create something different for your customers. Recipe Courtesy of Chef Luke Powell

Ingredients

Ingredients Cure
Lamb Leg easy carve 1
Salt 55gr
Brown Sugar 55gr
Water 2litres
Rosemary 6 sprigs
Cinnamon 2 sticks
Bay leafs 6
Black whole peppercorns 1 tbs
Yellow mustard seeds 1 tbs
Carraway seeds 1 tbs
Cloves 8
Garlic cloves 4
Coriander powder 2 tbs
Thyme 1 bunch
Sodium Nitrite (cure No 1)  3grams

Preparation

Butcher Tips: 

Lamb ham can be made from a traditional bone in, semi boneless easy carve or boned & rolled lamb legs. 

Truss easy carve or boneless lamb legs tight then vac down for a day or two to remove air pockets inside the leg. 

 

Method - 

  • Place your lamb leg in a non-porous container that you will be brining in and pour over water to see how much you will need to completely cover.
  • Measure out the water into a pot and add the appropriate 5.5% of salt, sugar and the calculated sodium nitrite.
  • Bring up to a simmer to dissolve salts and sugar.

Now you are going to add your all the other flavourings – essentially you are making a flavourful tea that the salt is going to soak into the ham.

  • Once all of the ingredients are added to the brine let them steep in the hot liquid to infuse all those flavours.
  • Once it has infused let it cool completely and pour over the leg. If you want to use a brining needle to speed it up, you can at this point, firstly strain the mixture to remove seeds etc before injecting the leg all over.
  • Let the leg brine in the cure for one week (in the fridge). (3 days if injected)
  • Take the leg out of the brine and give a rinse off under running water and place inside tube netting or truss the leg into an even shape.
  • Let it hang in your fridge over night to dry out slightly and develop a tacky surface this is called a 'pellicle' and will help the smoke adhere to it a lot better than if it was wet.
  • Place the leg in a preheated smoker at 80c and smoke until the internal temperature is 70c
  • Shock the leg in ice water to reduce the temperature as quickly as possible.
  • Enjoy!