Ever since I was a little boy, I have loved lamb. When my mom made lamb chops or roasted a leg of lamb, those were some of my favorite meals growing up. Nowadays I don’t eat it much and normally it’s at a restaurant. My wife doesn’t like lamb and since there aren’t many people in the house, I don’t get to cook it. But I know I can make it at least once a year and that’s on my birthday.

For all the years I’ve made it, I’ve roasted it in the oven, then served it as slices. But this time, I wanted to do something different and barbecue it to make pulled lamb. I got some further inspiration from Matt Pittman of Meat Church who makes pulled lamb for gyros! So that’s what we’ll be having for dinner tonight. My daughter is making her awesome homemade tzatziki sauce and dicing up Persian cucumbers and tomatoes. We’ll be serving all that on fresh-made pita bread from our local falafel shop. But enough of that, let’s get to making the lamb.

Preparation

There’s really not much to do to prepare a leg of lamb. But a little effort will go a long way to creating a great product in the end. First off, I remove the hard fat from the leg. All hard fat does is block heat from penetrating the meat, so I remove it. But I keep the soft fat on because it’ll melt away and make the meat much more succulent. I also don’t remove the silver skin. You can, but it’s just a lot of work and it’s usually so thin that it just cooks away.

Some legs of lamb have a big flap of meat at the end of the bone. Whether I’m smoking or roasting the leg, I always fold it over the joint and truss it with some butcher twine. That’ll ensure a nice, even cook.

As far as seasoning is concerned, you can go from basic to sophisticated. Some folks like to make an oil and fresh herb and garlic rub with fresh dill, rosemary, garlic, and olive oil. I prefer using dry rubs. For this cook, I used my new favorite rub from Meat Church called the Hail Mary Rub. This is Matt Pittman’s tailgating rub that he uses for Dallas Cowboys tailgating before games (he’s the Cowboys’ official tailgate pitmaster, BTW). This is a great blend of several different spices and it goes great with lamb. I also use a light sprinkling of Meat Church Honey Hog Hot to give it just a tiny bit of a bite. Finally, I finely chop fresh rosemary from my garden and sprinkle that all over the leg.

What about garlic? That’ll come later.

When I do a leg of lamb, I always crosshatch the fat cap through the fat to expose some meat. I then season it liberally with whatever rub I’m using. I’ve gotten the best results prepping the lamb the day before and putting it into the fridge to dry brine. Once I’m ready to cook it, I apply a bit more seasoning to the top of the leg (fat side for me), then into the smoker or oven it goes.

Smoking the Lamb

For this cook, I cooked the lamb at 225°F. It was cold and windy to I set my Traeger to 250°F. It fluctuated between 220° and 230° the entire cook. When the lamb reached 160°F (about 6 hours), I placed it in a half sheet foil pan and dropped in about dozen cloves of whole garlic and a sprig of fresh rosemary. I covered the pan with a sheet of heavy duty foil, then finished the cook in a 250°F oven until the internal temp reached 201°F (about an hour and a half) and the meat was probe tender. If it took a little effort to probe the meat, I would’ve let it go to 203°F to 205°F.

Pulling the Lamb

Meats like pork and lamb don’t need a rest like beef, so I pulled it by hand using insulated gloves. That meat practically dropped off the bone in a few places! I also have large pulling forks that normally use for pulled pork, but for the lamb, I chose to do it by hand to get a chunkier end product.

As for the garlic, the beautiful thing about adding the whole garlic cloves to the pan was that they roasted in the au jus. The rosemary sprig added tons of aroma and flavor.

At that point, the lamb was ready to serve, but dinner was still a couple of hours away, so I re-covered the pan and put it back in the oven at the “keep warm” setting after I let most of the heat out. This’ll allow the au jus and juices really penetrate the pulled meat.