Peking Glazed Lamb

Lamb, mutton, game.... Zebra, Ostrich, Crocodile. Whatever the meat, if you have a recipe, feel free to post it here.

Peking Glazed Lamb

Postby Steve » 21 Oct 2009, 20:58

This is one I created when I first started smoking. I wanted to do a BBQ equivalent of one of my all time favorites, Peking Braised Lamb, which my mum used to cook when I was young. It's a mixture of classic Chinese flavours, hoi-sin, 5-spice and hint of nuttiness running through. It's a bit of work to do but it's well worth it.

This recipe is for a leg of lamb cooked low and slow but there’s no reason you couldn’t apply the rubs and glaze to chops or lamb kebabs for grilling. In fact these flavours will work well with pork or chicken too.

The Rub

Makes about 1 cup:
•1/4 cup sea salt flake
•1/4 cup (packed) light Muscovado sugar
•2 tbsp paprika
•1 tbsp coarse black pepper (more or less to taste)
•2 tsp Szechuan peppercorns
•1 star anise
•1 tsp onion granules
•1/2 tsp garlic granules
•1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
•1/4 tsp celery salt
•1/2 tsp chili powder (1 tsp for hotter rub)
•1 1/2 tsp Chinese 5-spice powder
•2 tbsp sesame seeds

•Use a pestle and mortar to break up the star anise, part way through add the Szechuan peppercorns and break it all down to the consistency of coarse black pepper.
•Place mixture in a large mixing bowl and set to one side.
•Use the pestle and mortar to crack the sesame seeds then add the salt and grind down to a semi-coarse consistency.
•Add this to your mixing bowl along with the rest of the ingredients and mix well, until everything’s throughly combined.
•Alternatively you can whack all the ingredients in a food processor and grind to a fine powder. It’s a quick and easy method but you don’t get the control over the texture. I like to leave the peppercorns, sesame seeds and salt a little coarse with this one.
•Rub your leg of lamb with between 1/2 and 1 cup of rub depending on the size of your joint. Place any remaining rub in an airtight container and it should keep for months as long is it’s kept cool and away from sunlight.

Here's a leg all rubbed and ready.

Image

•I recommend leaving your lamb rubbed up for about 3-5 hours before cooking.

The Glazing Sauce

Makes about 1 1/2 cups, enough for a small jar:
•1/2 cup hoisin sauce
•1 cup fresh chicken stock
•3 tbsp dry sherry
•2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
•1 tbsp butter
•1 star anise
•1/2 fresh red chilli pepper (deseeded)
•1 clove of garlic
•2 spring onions
•1-3 tsp brown sugar
•1-2 tsp Chines 5 spice

•Finely chop the chilli and spring onion. Use all the spring onion, the green bits at the top are full of flavour.
•Saute the spring onion and chili in the butter over a moderate heat until they soften well and the onions start to caramelize.
•Turn the heat up to high and add the sherry. Cook off the alcohol in the sherry.
•Add the chicken stock, peanut butter, star anise, hoisin, 1 tsp 5-spice and 1/2 tsp sugar.
•Cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
•Remove the star anise and transfer mixture to a food processor. Blend it until smooth then return to the pan.
•Simmer uncovered for 5-10 minutes or until the sauce starts to thicken.
•At this point taste it. You might want to add more sugar or 5-spice but it will depend on the hoisin you’ve used. I use a Chinese brand from my local Chinese supermarket, it’s really tangy so I need to add another tsp of sugar at this point. But some hoisin sauces are a lot less tangy so you might want a bit more 5-spice to give the sauce more punch. The sauce shouldn’t need any salt but a quick hit of freshly ground pepper will work if you fancy it. Let your taste-buds judge it.
•Transfer the sauce to your storage container, let it cool and store in the fridge for up to a month. If you sterilize a jar for storage then it should keep a lot longer.

So now you've got your meat ready, it's time to cook it :D

•Set up your smoker for low 'n' slow at 225F - 250F. I use quite a light wood for this and I really only tickle the meat with smoke, whatever you do, don't oversmoke this dish.
•Your going to cook this to an internal temperature of between 140F and 160F depending on how rare you like it. I normally like my meat so rare that it tries to dodge the fork, but I reckon this is one that goes well around medium (150F). That's going to take a few hours - about five beers I think.

Here's one I was smoking earlier ;)

Image

• When you get to about 10F short of your target temperature, glaze the lamb with some of your sauce (pre-warmed). At this point it's worth raising the temperature of your smoker to 300F if you can. This will caramelise the glaze even better, but don't worry if you can't.

And that's about it:

Image

Delicious!!!!!!!

I like to serve it thinly sliced with a spicy rice noodle salad and some of the sauce served warm. If you like your meat well done, I reckon this will shred very nicely.

If you try this, I hope you enjoy it.

Cheers

Steve
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Re: Peking Glazed Lamb

Postby mikey » 27 Sep 2011, 16:36

looks good are you, using bone in leg?
and what sort of chillis? finger?
and any substutes for peanut butter? possibly some sesame oil blended up with butter?
(I can't eat peanuts/)
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