Roast shoulder of lamb with Boulangère potatoes recipe

Just love this recipe – Roast shoulder of lamb with Boulangère potatoes recipe

One of the things I love about food is its ability to change moods, somehow the magic of something tasty and filling can turn even the most stubborn of melancholy induced frowns upside down, which can only be a good thing right? People have sometimes said that I get far too excited about food and I rarely think about anything else, and they’d be right, Food is my mistress. Thankfully my lady is more than accepting of my love affair.

When I was a boy I used to look forward to Sunday dinners, it was the one day in the week that I had some resemblance of normal family life. A hearty Sunday meal followed by boring Sunday television like soldier and heartbeat, ‘Sit and watch it…it’s culture’ was always uttered in my direction whenever I whined about my mothers choice of TV. I always saw Sunday’s as a sort of ‘mini Christmas day’, the relaxing feeling of not doing very much, having a full belly and stretching out on the sofa whilst watching ‘cultural’ TV, and thinking about the soft moist pull apart lamb that I had just blasted down my neck. For all her faults – as I have mentioned many times on here – my mother was a very good cook and she was exceptional at cooking a good Sunday lunch.

This recipe makes a change from the traditional Sunday lunch, it’s the sort of dish you can leave alone to get on with itself while you get on with not doing very much. You have the potatoes and meat all in one pan so all you need to prepare is your veg. You don’t even need gravy as the lamb is moist and the potatoes give up a thick, sticky unctuous sauce that has all the flavors of the lamb. I have had Boulangère potatoes many times before, but putting them below a roasting haunch of good meat is even better, you can do it with any slow roasting joint; a piece of brisket would be deliciously done this way. The point of this dish is the meat releases it’s fat and juices which get soaked up by the spuds, creating soft fudgey potatoes with a crisp top. Boulangère potatoes translate as ‘bakers potatoes’, in France the local women would take the dish of thinly sliced potatoes, onions, and stock down to the local bakery. As people didn’t have ovens of their own the bakery would turn off the ovens at the end of the working day and allow locals to cook their food in the residual heat.

This is slow food, and I mean slow. You want to cook this dish for about 4 or 5 hours on a really low heat, so unless you have a lot of spare time in the week, this dish is ideal for long slow, lay about lazy days.

If you make my Roast shoulder of lamb with Boulangère potatoes Recipe, be sure to take a photo and tag me @onlinefoodblog on Instagram or Twitter. I would love nothing more than to see your creations!

How do you make Roast shoulder of lamb with Boulangère potatoes

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Serves: 6 Servings Prep Time: 30 Minutes Cooking Time: 5 Hours

Ingredients

2kg lamb shoulder joint
3 medium-sized onions finely sliced
5-7 Large Desiree potatoes, peeled.
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
Around 4-6 fresh garlic cloves, peeled
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
Olive oil
650ml Good chicken stock, make your own or buy the best you can (Knorr jelly stock is good)

Instructions

1. First, preheat your oven to gas mark 2 (150°C/300°F).
2. Then take a knife and make deep incisions all over the top of the lamb.
3. Then force the garlic cloves into the incisions, making sure they are equally spread apart.
4. Pickoff sprigs of rosemary and do the same.
5. Make sure the garlic and rosemary are well pushed in as this will prevent them from burning and tasting bitter.
6. Next, rub some olive oil over the lamb and season liberally with salt and pepper.
7. Take your potatoes and thinly slice, now you can do this by hand like I do or you can use a mandolin, or food processor with a slicing attachment if you have one.
8. You want a nice thin crisp like potatoes.
9. Take a deep roasting tray then start with a thin layer of sliced onion, then a layer of sliced potatoes, then scatter with some more onion.
10. Season the layer with a little salt, pepper and pick off some fresh thyme (about 1 sprig per layer).
11. Repeat this process until everything has been used up and you finish with a potato layer.
12. Place the lamb shoulder on top of the potatoes and pour the chicken stock over the potatoes, it should come to just over halfway up the side of the roasting tray, don’t immerse the potatoes completely otherwise they won’t crisp on the top.
13. Bake in the oven for 4-5 hours, remove, cover with foil and rest for half an hour before serving.

Notes

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