Dutch Oven Roast Lamb Recipe

Roast dinners are always a little bit stressful in my household. Balancing all the side dishes to keep every family member happy while caring for the main event – be it turkey, pork, lamb, or anything else – tends to leave me with a pretty short temper!

That is until I found this incredible Dutch oven roast lamb recipe!

This recipe involves slow cooking the lamb in a Dutch oven (literally my favorite cookpot ever) for perfectly succulent, tender, and well-seasoned meat every time. And because I can pretty much throw it in the oven and forget about it, I have more time to concentrate on my other dishes… Plus a little extra energy to socialize with the family (okay, sometimes I still pretend to be super-busy and stressed so I can hide in the kitchen, but who doesn’t need an escape from family-time occasionally?).

Bone-in or bone out?

When buying lamb, the primary question most people seem to have is whether they should go for boneless or bone-in.
Although bone-in meat generally has more flavor than boneless varieties, I tend to prefer cooking with boneless lamb for four reasons:

1. It’s easier to fit a boneless leg of lamb in a roasting pan.
2. It’s much easier to carve boneless meat.
3. You get more meat from a boneless leg.
4. Boneless lamb cooks faster.

Fast cook or slow-roasted?

If you’re cooking for the masses, it can be tempting to get caught up in the quick-and-easy recipes to get those dishes out of the oven and onto the table in less time. But I think this is a mistake.

Although you can get delicious meat using a fast roasting method, most chefs agree that taking your time to slow-roast a leg of lamb leaves you with a far more succulent, tender, and tasty meal that falls apart on the fork and melts in your mouth.

Best Roast Lamb Recipe with Herby Gremolata

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 4 hours, 30 minutes
Resting Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 5 hours, 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 5lb boneless leg of lamb
• 6 garlic cloves, peeled and halved lengthwise
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• 1 cup white wine
• 2 cups hot chicken stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 5 sprigs fresh thyme
• 2 onions, sliced into wedges
• ½ cup lemon juice

For the gremolata:

• 2 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
• 2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 2 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 450’F and allow the lamb to come to room temperature.
2. Use a small paring knife to make 12 slits, equally spaced, across the whole leg.
3. Insert the halved garlic cloves into each slit.
4. Rub the lamb with olive oil all over and season generously.
5. Place the lamb, fat side up, on a rack over a roasting pan.
6. Plant the lamb in the oven and roast for 30 minutes to allow the meat to brown nicely.
7. While the meat is browning, place the rest of the ingredients in a large cast-iron Dutch oven (like this one).
8. Next, make the gremolata by combining the gremolata ingredients in a small bowl.
9. Once your lamb has a nice brown exterior, remove it from the roasting pan and place it fat-side down in the Dutch oven on top of your other ingredients.
10. Reduce the oven temperature to 350’F and boil the kettle.
11. Add the boiling water to the Dutch oven to cover 1/3 of the lamb.
12. Add half the gremolata mixture to the Dutch oven, then put the lid on and put it in the oven.
13. Roast for 2 hours (check the liquid level after 1 hour. If the water is low, add more boiling water as required).
14. After 2 hours, take the Dutch oven out and turn the meat over, so the fat side is on top.
15. Roast for another 1 and 1/2 hours until you can pull the meat apart easily.
16. Take the lid off and roast for a further 30 minutes to finish browning the meat.
17. After the final 30 minutes of roasting, take the lamb out of the Dutch oven and transfer it to a serving platter.
18. Cover the lamb and platter loosely with aluminum foil and leave to rest for 20 minutes.
19. While the lamb is resting, remove any large pieces from the sauce that’s left in the Dutch oven (onions, thyme sprigs, etc.). Simmer the sauce, thickening it with flour if required.

Notes

Although it’s easy to get put off by the long cooking times and the number of steps it takes to make this delicious roast lamb… Because you only need to deal with it for a few minutes every hour or so, I actually find this recipe incredibly easy and one of the least time-consuming parts of cooking a roast dinner.
Not only is this roast dinner effortless to master, but it also produces the most delicious, flavorsome, and tender lamb that’s sure to impress anyone you serve it to. Trust me, try it once, and you’ll never look back!