Monday, March 16, 2020

Sous Vide Bone-in Leg of Lamb

Tender and juicy, this sous vide bone-in leg of lamb is guaranteed to be cooked to perfection inside and out. You do have to start one day ahead of when you would like to serve it, but most of the time is hands off, with a sous vide precision cooker. Finish it off by roasting in a hot oven.

Food Lust People Love: Tender and juicy, this sous vide bone-in leg of lamb is guaranteed to be cooked to perfection inside and out. You do have to start one day ahead of when you would like to serve it, but most of the time is hands off, with a sous vide precision cooker. Finish it off by roasting in a hot oven.


When my son-in-law gave me a sous vide precision cooker for Christmas several years ago, I had very little knowledge about that method of cooking. A lot of research and a few experiments won me over. Sous vide is a great way to control the internal temperature of meat, making sure that it’s not over-cooked or dried out.

My one issue, which I touched upon in my post for a chicken crown roast, is that all the recipes I could find online were for boneless meat. Expanding on my triumph with the brace of guinea fowl and chicken roast, I gave a whole leg of lamb a try. Another triumph. In fact, I’ve made a whole leg of lamb this way a couple of times and now I don’t think I’ll roast one any other way. The only downside is that I have to plan ahead, but it's totally worth it!

The inside is tender and juicy from the long cooking at low temperature in the sous vide but the outside still has all the divine golden bits (and drippings in the pan) to make a delicious gravy from its time in a hot oven. Best of both worlds.

Sous Vide Bone-in Leg of Lamb

If you want tender lamb cooked to perfection, sous vide is the way to go. Perfect lamb every time. I'll be honest. I wasn't planning to share this recipe because I didn't know how popular sous vide cooking would get, but it was so good, I couldn't not share. Please forgive the non-staged photos.

Ingredients
1 whole leg of lamb, bone in – about 2 kg or 4 lbs 6 ozs
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 sprigs fresh rosemary or thyme, stems discarded, leaves minced

Method
Use a sharp knife to score the fat on the leg of lamb. Rub it with the salt, pepper and herb of your choice. I usually do rosemary because it partners so well with lamb, but thyme is also good.

Put the leg of lamb in a sealable, sous-vide-friendly plastic bag with the olive oil and get all the air out of the bag by immersing it in water and sealing it up.

Pop your sous vide precision cooker into a large vessel of water and set the temperature for 131°F. Put the vacuum-bag-seasoned leg into the water. Sous vide for 22 hours.



When the 22 hours are up, you have two choices. If you are ready to roast and serve the leg of lamb, you can preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C and roast it to an internal temperature of about 130°F or 55°C for rare lamb or 145°F or 62.78°C for medium well. Cover with foil and rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

Or you can chill the leg of lamb, still in the sous vide bag, until you are ready to roast.

If you chose option two, chill the lamb in the refrigerator till ready to roast. Bring it closer to room temperature as you preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Roast the leg of lamb in your preheated oven until it is well browned and has an internal temperature of 130°F or 55°C for rare lamb or 145°F or 62.78°C for medium well. Cover with foil and rest before slicing.

Food Lust People Love: Tender and juicy, this sous vide bone-in leg of lamb is guaranteed to be cooked to perfection inside and out. You do have to start one day ahead of when you would like to serve it, but most of the time is hands off, with a sous vide precision cooker. Finish it off by roasting in a hot oven.


Enjoy!

Welcome to another MultiCooker post! Check out all of the other alternative cooking method posts we are sharing today.

Pressure Cooker & Instant Pot Recipes:
Slow Cooker Recipes:
Sous Vide Recipes:
Tell your friends about #MulticookerMonday! We post each month on the third Monday with trusted recipes for your favorite small appliances!


Multicooker Monday is a blogger group created by Sue of Palatable Pastime for all of us who need encouragement to make better use of our small appliances like slow cookers, Instant Pots, Air Fryers, rice cookers and sous vide machines. We get together every third Monday of the month to share our recipes. If you are a food blogger who would like to post with us, please request to join our Facebook group.

Pin this Sous Vide Bone-in Leg of Lamb!

Food Lust People Love: Tender and juicy, this sous vide bone-in leg of lamb is guaranteed to be cooked to perfection inside and out. You do have to start one day ahead of when you would like to serve it, but most of the time is hands off, with a sous vide precision cooker. Finish it off by roasting in a hot oven.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Homemade Senbei Rice Crackers #BreadBakers

Light and crispy, these homemade senbei rice crackers with sesame seeds are so crunchy and tasty that it’s hard to eat just one! Fortunately this recipe makes two dozen.

Food Lust People Love: Light and crispy, these homemade senbei rice crackers with sesame seeds are so crunchy and tasty that it’s hard to eat just one! Fortunately this recipe makes two dozen.
When we lived in Southeast Asia, one of my favorite snacks was senbei or rice crackers. There was one particular brand that came in various flavors like barbecue, seaweed, plain, and spicy. You know, if you’ve been reading here a while, that I always bought the spicy ones.

But honestly, I loved them all. Okay, the plain ones weren’t that exciting but I loved the rest of them.

When I decided to try making them myself for this month’s Bread Bakers event, I was tempted to make spicy senbei but it occurred to me that rice crackers would go perfectly with a dish I was making for Fish Friday Foodies, ginger sesame tuna tartare. So I give you senbei with black sesame seeds! (Check back next Friday to see the other recipe.)

Homemade Senbei Rice Crackers

As I made the crumbly dough for this recipe, the texture reminded me of shortbread I have made, both sweet and savory, even though it has very little oil or fat. The best way forward seemed to be to slice it like I did with the shortbread. Worked a treat! This recipe is adapted from one on the Japan Centre website.

Ingredients
For the senbei:
3/4 cup or 120g glutinous rice flour aka mochiko
1/3 cup, loosely packed, or 40g cooked white rice
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
5-6 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons black sesame seeds

For the glaze:
1 tablespoons soy sauce (I use low sodium Kikkoman)
2 teaspoons mirin

Method
Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone liners.

In a small bowl combine the soy sauce and mirin for the glaze and set aside.

To make the dough, place the rice flour, cooked rice, salt, and oil in a food processor. Run until finely ground.



Next, slowly add the water through the feed tube a tablespoon at a time. After four tablespoons, scrape the sides and bottom of the food processor with a rubber spatula and pulse again. The mixture will look pretty dry still, but put a little the palm of your hand and see if you can form a small ball that hangs together tightly.



If it hangs together but is still really crumbly like mine, add the last tablespoon of water and process again. Scrape the sides and bottom of the processor down again and retest to see if a ball hangs together better. You should be good to go now. Depending on the humidity in your location and how much moisture was in your cooked rice, you might not need the last tablespoon of water.



Place mixture into a bowl and add the sesame seeds. Knead to combine everything into dough.



Roll the dough into a log. Cut the log into 24  1/4 in or 1/2cm slices.



Put the slices on your prepared baking pans and use your fingers to press them out into thin circles. The thinner, the better. If you leave them too thick, they'll still be crispy but they won't be light.



Bake the rice crackers, one baking pan at a time, for about 8-10 minutes. Flip the crackers with a spatula.



Bake again for another 10-12 minutes, or until the crackers start to brown around the edges.



Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a minute or two. Brush the tops with the soy sauce/mirin glaze.


Return to the oven and bake until lightly browned (about 3 to 4 minutes.) Keep a close eye on the crackers to make sure they do not burn.

Food Lust People Love: Light and crispy, these homemade senbei rice crackers with sesame seeds are so crunchy and tasty that it’s hard to eat just one! Fortunately this recipe makes two dozen.


Cool completely on a wire rack before serving. As they cool, they will get crispy.

Food Lust People Love: Light and crispy, these homemade senbei rice crackers with sesame seeds are so crunchy and tasty that it’s hard to eat just one! Fortunately this recipe makes two dozen.


Store in a dry, cool place.

Food Lust People Love: Light and crispy, these homemade senbei rice crackers with sesame seeds are so crunchy and tasty that it’s hard to eat just one! Fortunately this recipe makes two dozen.


Enjoy!

This month my Bread Baker friends are all sharing cracker recipes. Many thanks to our host, Sneha of Sneha's Recipe. Check out them out below:
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our lovely bread by following our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated after each event on the #BreadBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.
BreadBakers

Pin these Homemade Senbei Rice Crackers!

Food Lust People Love: Light and crispy, these homemade senbei rice crackers with sesame seeds are so crunchy and tasty that it’s hard to eat just one! Fortunately this recipe makes two dozen.

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Monday, March 9, 2020

Savory Mediterranean Scones #BakingBloggers

These savory Mediterranean scones are tender and fluffy, full of flavor with feta cheese, soft sun-dried tomatoes and a mixture of salty olives. They are a great breakfast or snack. I highly recommend using one for a fried egg sandwich!



As I prepped my ingredients to make these scones, my husband wandered by. It was a Sunday morning and no one at our house moves very fast on one of those. “Whatcha making?” he asked. “Mediterranean scones,” I replied. “No such thing!” was his response. And I suppose that he has a point. Scones are a particularly British thing, not unlike his good self, and they don’t usually contain feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and olives.

But as soon as Sue, the host of Baking Bloggers, announced the theme for this month’s event - biscuits and scones - I knew I wanted to bake something savory. I’ve already shared my freeze-and-bake buttermilk biscuits, my slightly sweet bacon honey mustard biscuits and, of course, the ubiquitous fall favorite, sweet pumpkin scones so it was time to jump over to the savory side.

“When in doubt, add cheese” is one of my mottos so a Mediterranean-inspired scone with feta cheese seemed ideal.

Savory Mediterranean Scones

This recipe is adapted from one on BBC Good Food from way back in 2004, with just a few little tweaks. The original created such a wet dough that I decided to make drop biscuits/scones instead of rolling and cutting. My way is easier and the results are lovely and fluffy.

Ingredients
2 3/4 cups or 345g all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup or 56g butter, cut in pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 halves soft Italian sundried tomatoes
3 1/2 oz or 100g feta cheese
10 or 55g mixed Greek olives, plus extra for decoration, if desired
1 1/4 cups or 295ml full fat milk

Optional to serve: butter

Method
Heat the oven to 375°F or 190°C. Line a large baking pan with baking parchment or a silicone liner.

Pit your olives by mashing them with the side of a big knife on a cutting board. Remove the pits and chop the olives roughly.

Stack your sun-dried tomatoes and use a sharp knife to cut them into small pieces. Alternatively, if you have sharp kitchen scissors, I find they are very effective at cutting through a small stack of dried tomatoes.

Use a fork or knife to crumble the feta cheese, keeping some pieces bigger than others. This insures that you still have some chunks of cheese left visible after you fold the milk into the dry ingredients.



In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Use a pastry blender to blend in the butter and the oil, until the mixture resembles rough sand.



Add in the sun-dried tomatoes, feta and olives and stir well so they are coated with the flour.



Make a well in the center and pour in the milk. Use a rubber spatula (so you can scrape the sides of the bowl effectively) to gently fold the milk into the flour, rotating the bowl as you fold, until all of the milk is incorporated. Do not over mix. This is going to be an extremely thick batter.



Use an ice cream scoop or two serving spoons to drop the dough onto your prepared baking pan. My ice cream scoop holds about 1/4 cup by volume, which translated to 12 drop scones.



This is the time to take the stones out of a three extra olives and quarter them if you want to decorate the scones with a spare piece of olive.



Bake for 30-35 minutes in your preheated oven until the scones are risen and lightly browned.



Check out the lovely bottoms! Golden, crunchy and divine!

Transfer to a wire rack. These are wonderful warm and, if you like, well-embuttered. That said, we ate them plain as well and they were great!

An aside: Blogger seems to think that embuttered is a misspelling, which surprised me. So I looked it up. It is indeed a real word (OF COURSE, IT IS!) but embuttered is rarely used. We should totally change that. Who's with me? EMBUTTER all the things.



Enjoy!



This month my Baking Blogger friends are all sharing biscuit and scone recipes, both sweet and savory. Many thanks to our founder and host Sue of Palatable Pastime. Check out the recipes on the list below:

Baking Bloggers is a friendly group of food bloggers who vote on a shared theme and then post recipes to fit that theme one the second Monday of each month. If you are a food blogger interested in joining in, inquire at our Baking Bloggers Facebook group. We'd be honored if you would join us in our baking adventures.

Pin these Savory Mediterranean Scones!

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