Stuffed Leg Of Lamb cooked in Guinness

St Patricks Day and a stuffed leg with a drop of the Black Stuff

I had been considering doing something for St Pat’s day (Sunday 17 March) so where better to start than with a piece of lamb and a bottle of Guinness. Now getting the lamb in Germany is difficult but is easier than getting the Guinness, I popped into my local Turkish butcher (the best place to get lamb in Germany) and staring me in the face was a nice piece of the top end of the leg, it was just over 1 kg with the bone in, so would do me for two meals.

I then had to traipse the supermarkets and Getränkemarkts (off licences) and was giving up hope of finding a few bottles of Guinness, when I thought about a small one just around the corner from my house, I could have saved myself a lot of heart searching if I had thought of it first.

So it was to be stuffed leg of lamb in an onion and Guinness confit sauce, served with French beans and Champ. Well that is what it should have been, but though I had bought the potatoes I had forgotten the scallions, but I had bought some young leeks so these made a fine substitute.

The quantities can be upped to suit  the number eating, but this would have done two just fine.

1kg of fillet end of a leg (you can get your butcher to debone it, but doing it yourself isn’t difficult)

¼ packet of sage and onion stuffing

250ml marigold vegetable stock

1 large shallot (diced)

3 cloves of garlic (crushed and diced)

3 sprigs of rosemary

6 large leaves of fresh sage

2 large onions

Small handful of freeze dried soup vegetables (or fresh if you have them)

Salt and pepper

Olive oil for frying and sautéing

2 bottles of Guinness

So first debone your piece of lamb, slit along the length of the bone, open it out and work your knife along the bone releasing the flesh, (you could use the bone to make stock, but as I had some I didn’t need too)

 

Make your sage, rosemary and onion stuffing, I used a packet with additional shallots, sage and rosemary. I made up a cup of vegetable stock, added this to the packet sage in a bowl and left to soak while I chopped the herbs and sautéed the shallot and garlic, added these and allowed to swell.

Open the meat out skin side down on a board and butterfly it, by making small incisions so that the piece of meat is flat, salt and pepper the meat and I put a sprig of rosemary into the centre.  I then filled the centre with the stuffing and rolled, binding together with kitchen twine, pinning another sprig of rosemary under the twine.

 

Switch the oven on and set to 220°C.
In the mean time I had finely sliced the onions and another couple of garlic cloves, heated a couple of table spoons of Olive oil into my trusty cast Iron casserole (one of the best buys from Aldi ever) and slowly softened the onions allowing them to take on a little colour. 

 

Removed from the casserole and added some more oil, heated up high and browned the lamb all over, turn the heat down and return the onion and garlic to the casserole. 

 

Add a bottle of Guinness and the vegetables, lid on and into the oven for 20mins, then turn the oven down to 180°C and forget about it for 1 to 1½ hrs, by this time the lamb will be melting (this is not a rare cooked leg of lamb, that is for another day), the onions and Guinness turned into a fantastic confit, I now removed the meat covered and set aside to rest.

I added 400ml of beef stock, just because I had some, but it could have been any stock or wine or more Guinness. This made a fantastic rich sauce,

 

I had boiled some potatoes, sautéed some finely sliced young leeks, mashed the potatoes with a good knob of butter and a slug of milk, and added the softened leeks.

I had also steamed some green French beans, so there it was St Patrick’s Day stuffed leg of lamb, oops nearly forgot open up that other bottle and pour yourself a glass of the Black Stuff (wine just doesn’t go with this)