Garlic & Rosemary Roast Lamb Recipe…

…with roasted vegetables and sweet potato

Serves: 4/5
Prep Time: 30 mins
Cooking Time: 1hr 25mins (depending on size of meat)

We had a sleepover last night with Kat, a good friend from our school days – a fitting excuse to share a good meal and a bottle of wine (or or more). We ended up putting this roast lamb recipe together mainly because we managed to get a 50% reduction on a half shoulder of lamb! I love this particular roast lamb recipe because it’s pretty easy to prepare and all the prep can be done before everything kicks off.

Roast Lamb Recipe Ingredients

• 1 x Half Lamb Shoulder (ours was about 1kg)
• A drizzle of olive oil
• 3 x Rosemary sprigs (cut up into 1 inch sprigs)
• 3 cloves of garlic (sliced width-wise into 1/4 inch slices)
• 1 medium onion cut in half

Roasted Vegetable Ingredients

• 1 x Courgette (cut to 1/2 inch slices)
• 10 cherry tomatoes
• 2 x Red onions (quartered)
• 1 yellow, red or orange capsicum pepper (cut into 1 inch squares)
• A drizzle of oil

You will also need 1 whole sweet potato per person

Roast Lamb Recipe Method

This roast lamb recipe is all about timing, so I’ll give it to you as it comes:-

1. Take a sharp knife and make a series of 1/2 inch wide incisions into the meat, make a grid with about 1.5 inches between each cut.
2. Drizzle a little olive oil over the lamb and rub it all over.
3. Now take 1 piece of rosemary and a garlic slice and stuff these firmly into the first incision. Repeat until all of the incisions have a bit of rosemary and a bit of garlic in them. The strong flavour from these ingredients will permeate the meat and help with the sauce at the end.
4. Put the lamb in a pre-heated (190°C) oven and set the timer for 1hr 25min’s (25 minutes per 500g plus 25 minutes)
5. When the beeper goes off, take the lamb out and leave it to rest for 10 minutes while the roasted vegetables and sweet potatoes are cooking.

Roasted Vegetables

1. Put all of the vegetables into a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil
2. 40 minutes before the end of the lamb cooking time, put the baking tray into the oven
3. Leave in the oven for 10 minutes after the roast lamb comes out

Sweet Potatoes

1. Wrap in foil
2. Put into the oven at the same time as the roasted vegetables
3. Leave in the oven for 10 minutes while the roast lamb is resting

Sauce

You don’t actually need much sauce at all, just a little bit to drizzle over the meat

1. When you remove the lamb from the baking tin to rest, drain off as much as the fat as you can (without sacrificing the meat juices)
2. Place the pan directly over a low heat and squish all of the onions to get the flavour out, then remove them from the pan and discard.
3. Add about 1 tbsp flour and stir in until the fat is absorbed and you have a kind of smooth paste.
4. Cook for about 3 or minutes to cook the flour flavour out.
5. Slowly add the red wine and stir – this should leave you with ‘saucy’ consistency.
6. Finally add the red currant jelly, salt and pepper and let it simmer for about 5 minutes.
7. Taste it – if it’s too strong or too thick you can add some water until it tastes right.