Roast Shoulder of Lamb - Saturday Supper

My friend's father is a butcher and her dad asked me if I would like a shoulder of lamb to cook for the weekend.  Of course I said yes but as we are going to be out tomorrow I am cooking it for a Saturday Supper.

G Gibson, Butchers is in Charter Place in Watford, Hertfordshire and they specialize in BBQ meats and meat packs as well as manufacturing their own sausages. They are a butchers like the old days (if you are my age you will know what I mean!) a time when service was an everyday word.

Shoulder of lamb is a fattier piece of meat than the leg however long cooking will turn it into something that will melt in your mouth! And of course it had a great flavour.
 

 

Buying a different cut of meat now and again enlarges your meal repertoire giving the family a wider range and also helps stretch the budget.

When you pop into a local butcher you can ask all sorts of questions such as cooking times and how to use cheaper cuts in your recipes and to help finances, something which we are all struggling with these days.

I was quite excited to get the piece of lamb and decided to roast it on top of sliced onions and potatoes. Kind of an upside down hotspot!
 

As usual I made some slits in the meat and pushed slivers of garlic inside.

I rubbed the outside with a small amount of olive oil, salt and chopped fresh rosemary (from my allotment).

Place shoulder on top of the veg and pop into the oven 150oC for about 90 minutes.  Then turn up the oven and cover the meat with foil and continue cooking for another hour.
 

beautiful, tasty and tender roast shoulder of lamb

Be prepared for some great smells coming from the oven in the meantime! Whilst this was cooking I got started on the carrots and the last of the yellow courgettes from our allotment.

Mr R enjoying his roast shoulder of lamb Saturday supper!!

Then again there are the left overs. I made a soup by boiling up the bones to make a stock, skim the fat when it had cooled and fresh vegetables and let it simmer.  I also popped in the bits of meat I couldd scrape off the bones and finely sliced rainbow chard from the allotment.  The soup makes a few more meals for my father-in-law to put in his freezer for a cold, autumnal lunchtime that cost almost nothing to make!

You can Like G Gibsons on Facebook and strike up a relationship. They will be more than happy to look after you.

Many thanks to G Gibsons for my lamb.( I received it for free and was not required to write about it. All the opinions are my own.)