Sous Vide Leg of Lamb With Mint, Cumin, and Black Mustard Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What temperature to sous vide a leg of lamb? ›

Make a rub from Dijon, English mustard, salt and black pepper. Rub leg. Place leg into sous vide bag with aromatics. Cook at 56˚C/132.8˚F for 24 hours.

Temperature and Timing Chart for Sous Vide Lamb Rack

Larger American lamb should be cooked for a minimum of one hour. Lamb rack cooked under 130°F (54°C) should not be cooked for longer than two and a half hours at a time, for food-safety reasons.

For the perfect roast lamb, we recommend seasoning the surface of the meat, and then searing it, especially fat side down in a pan before roasting. Why bother with searing? Contrary to some stories, searing is less about locking in moisture, and all about improving the flavour!

Individual lamb chop sous vide

Pat the chops dry, then heat a tablespoon of oil in a heavy skillet or frying pan on high heat. It's important to get them as dry as possible to avoid splattering fat. Remove the chops from the vacuum bag and pat dry. Sear the chops on high heat in a heavy pan like cast iron.

For a medium cooked lamb, which is perfectly pink on the inside, budget about 25 minutes per pound or until the internal temp registers somewhere around 130°F (about 1 ½ to 2 hours in a 325 degrees F-heated oven).

Lamb should be roasted 20 mins per 450g/lb, plus an extra 20 mins. Weigh meat prior to roasting to determine cooking times. Cook at 220C/200C fan for the first 20 mins and then 190C/170C fan for the remaining time. Rest lamb before carving.

Sous vide allows for long, slow cooking at a low temperature, which breaks down these tissues and results in tender, juicy meat. Prepare the meat with generous salt and any other desired seasonings, then cook for a long time at a low temperature.

The best way to tell when the lamb has reached the fall-apart-tender stage is to use an internal meat thermometer inserted into the thickest portion of the lamb. The internal temp for “fall-apart-tender” is roughly 175 degrees F.

Lamb shoulder can benefit greatly from the extended cooking times of sous vide. For fall apart good lamb, I often use 165°F (73.9°C) for 12-18 hours. Cooking it at 131°F (55°C) for 1-2 days us steak-like.

Place the lamb, fat side up, on a rack set in a roasting pan; spread garlic paste all over lamb. Roast in oven until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the meat registers 135 degrees, for medium rare, about 2 hours.

Does lamb leg get more tender the longer you cook it? ›

The leg and rack of lamb are perfect for herb-crusting and oven-roasting; since the shank and shoulder are a bit tougher, they fare well in stews or braises—the long cook time allows them to significantly break down and become fork-tender.

Washing beef, pork, lamb, or veal before cooking it is not recommended. Bacteria in raw meat and poultry juices can be spread to other foods, utensils, and surfaces. We call this cross-contamination. Some consumers think they are removing bacteria and making their meat or poultry safe.

All of this makes it an ideal candidate for cooking sous vide, which makes overcooking nearly impossible and perfectly edge-to-edge medium-rare results the norm. Smaller New Zealand and Australian lamb needs only around 45 minutes to cook at a minimum. Larger American lamb should be cooked for a minimum of 1 hour.

Searing usually improves the appearance of sous vide food, creating a greater contrast between the edges and center of precision cooked foodstuffs. Along similar lines, searing after sous vide generates a difference in the texture and flavor of the inside versus outside, which is MUCH more tantalizing to the tastebuds.

The short answer is that it's very tough to predict exactly how spices are going to react in a sous-vide bag. I've found that if I want spice flavor, it's better to rub the spices into the meat after the sous-vide cooking phase and before the final searing phase.

Medium-well: An internal temperature of 70-75°C. It will look barely pink turning to gray, and be moist verging on dry. Well-done: An internal temperature of 75°C and over. It'll be gray throughout the meat and be dry.

Seal the bag using a vacuum sealer. Once the water bath has reached the desired temperature, place the bag in the water and cook the lamb shoulder for 12 to 24 hours, depending on the desired level of tenderness.

One of the questions we get asked most by meat lovers is, “Which herbs go well with lamb?” The answer is: there is no set answer! However, we find that rosemary and mint are firm favourites, but basil, thyme, tarragon, coriander, parsley and oregano can all work exceedingly well too, depending on the dish.