How to Make Grilled Lamb with Charred-Scallion Sauce

So I have 12 garlic cloves. We're not shy on garlic. I feel like lamb can handle some garlic. Plus it's eight pounds of meat. And then I also have two tablespoons of kosher salt. You got a lot of meat to cover here. A lot of seasoning, yep. Yeah, two tablespoons of vegetable oil. This is really just to bring it into paste territory so it's a little easier to spread on the lamb. Gotcha, gotcha. I have a tablespoon and a half of black pepper. And then I've got a tablespoon of oregano. So I've got some nice herb action going on in here too. And that's dried? This is dried oregano and then a tablespoon of fresh thyme. This, I really wanted that fresh pop. And then two teaspoons of lemon zest and a teaspoon of coriander. So I'm just gonna mix this up. This is a very approachable flavor profile for lamb. I wanted this to be something that people who aren't lamb lovers can be converted by. Okay, so this is an eight pound bone in leg of lamb. I'm using domestic lamb here because it has a slightly more mild flavor. But I do want to trim a good amount of this fat. So the lamb fat has a lot of that funky lamb flavor. That's where a lot of that gaminess is. Yeah, exactly. But actually also here I'm doing that because on the grill it can cause flare ups. So when I trim meat like this, I go in with my knife horizontally and I try to just get under that but not actually lose any meat. And then I lift it up like this. I lift up this side. And then again, do sort of, you're supposed to do some nice thick motions, not a ton of sawing to get it off. So just go under, keep your knife horizontal. That looks fantastic. So flavorful paste, lamb. Yes. Time for them to meet. So I'm just going to rub this in here. Give it a nice little massage. This is going to do two things. So actually on the grill, it's going to caramelize a little bit. Give me a little extra char. Give me some of that nice, impressive color and flavor. And I'm going to let the salt sit on here for 12 to 24 hours. And that's going to make the meat extra juicy. Okay, Bridget, it's my favorite part of the day. Time to grill. Let's get our grill on. So let me show you what I have going on here. I lit a chimney with six quarts of charcoal and I poured it over half the grill. I've got a hot side and a cold side, which is- Very hot side. And let me clean and oil this. Well, I always find it so much easier to do when it's hot. Like you can get it so much cleaner. And then this helps food from sticking. So I'm going to make you a charred scallion sauce. I know. That sounds really good. So I'm just going to take these 12 scallions and stick them over the hot side of the grill. Okay. So right now the grill is like piping hot, which is great for charring these. And I just want a nice little bit of char. So I'm just going to let these go three minutes a side. How are they looking? I think they're looking nice. I think they're, we've got some good char. All right. And these all are going to get chopped up. So it's okay if you have some that are a little more charred and some that are a little lighter. Okay. Here we go. So. Fantastic. Half our cooking's done. Now we just have this. That's all. What is this? You do want to put it parallel to the fire. All right. So I'm going to put it on over here and put it on the cool side. And then I'm also putting it fat side up. So this is really important for two reasons. So first off, lamb has a ton of fat. So you can get a ton of flare-ups. This actually helps render out some of the fat. You don't have to deal with all those flare-ups. Right. The second thing, this is a really tough cut of meat, actually. We're going to treat it nice and gently so it'll get really tender. But cooking it low and slow really helps do that as well. Allows more time for the collagen to start to break down. Exactly. And become more like silky meat. Yes, exactly. I'm going to cook this covered. It's going to take about an hour and a half. I'm looking for it to get to about 120 degrees in the thickest part, which will be about a half inch from the bone. So I've got the vent open here. I have the bottom vents open as well. Okay. It smells like heaven. An hour and a half of heaven has passed. And now, here we go. Look at that. So now I'm going to take a temp. I'm looking for 120 degrees. So let's see. I pull in and then I pull it back about a half inch. So I'm looking for a temp. We're right at 122. Close enough. 120 degrees is pretty rare for a leg of lamb. Leg of lamb, you actually do want to cook it a little bit more to a medium because you do want to actually like, it's a tough cut. If you do it to rare, it's going to be a little chewy when you eat it. It'll be really chewy. We're going to flip it over to the hot side. Gotcha. And do a nice little flip action. Look at that. And I'm going to let this go until it's nice and charred. Those coals have died down a good amount. It's been 90 minutes. They're much more gentle. A lot of the fat's already rendered out. So I'm going to let this go about five minutes. I'm really just going to go for color here. It's going to get up to a nice medium during that, but I don't need to temp it again. Oh my gosh. Please tell me it's done. It is done. Well, mostly. Yeah, you can see some really beautiful color. It's stunning. Okay, so this is a big piece of meat. So it does need to rest a little while. We have to let it rest 30 minutes. So I'm going to tent it with some foil. And while it rests, we can go in, we can make our scallion sauce, get ourselves ready. And then we eat. So our beautiful lamb is almost done resting. I will stand guard. Thank you, thank you. And I promised you an equally delicious sauce. I'm very excited about this. Yes, so it's pretty simple. We have those scallions, and I'm going to cut these into half inch pieces. And you can see they're a little dry. That's totally fine. Once you add them to the oil, they're going to get nice and soft. I have three quarters of a cup of olive oil, quarter of a cup of parsley, tablespoon of red wine vinegar for a little acidity, two garlic cloves, teaspoon of pepper, three quarters of a teaspoon of kosher salt. You can use table salt for both of these, but you don't want to use half as much. Have a quarter teaspoon of pepper flakes. And voila, fancy sauce for you. Very fancy, very elegant, and easy. I will say carving a leg of lamb is one of the pieces of this that takes a little practice. So first things first, you want to look at the makeup of it. So you've got this bone right in here, and it sort of turns here, and it runs this way. So you just want to be aware of that when you're carving. Now I also hold my knife at an angle, and I carve it, and I try to get these nice, thin slices. Oh, look at that. I know, so juicy. Oh my gosh. Oh, oh my goodness. Okay. It's getting better and better and better. It really does feed a whole bunch of different preferences too, because you do have the little bit more well done meat, and then you get closer to the medium rare. Oh, I love it. That crust from the lamb is getting on all the pieces. Let's get you some more. And of course, it wouldn't be complete without our charred scallion sauce. Okay, let's just give you a nice little drizzle here. Isn't it so pretty with the red and the green? Like even before I dig in, I'm real excited. Oh my goodness. Mm. Get a little bit of crunch there from the crust. Mm-hmm. And that sauce, the charred scallions, it softens their flavor, and it gives them a little bit of a sweetness. If you're ready to take your cooking to the next level, try our digital all-access membership, where you can stream every season of Cook's Country anytime. Scan the QR code or head over to cookscountry.com to sign up for a free trial. And let's make something great together.