We've always loved grilled lamb, usually butterflied and cooked so as to be served rare. I thought I'd find out what this would be like smoked. We started with a leg butt end. I couldn't get that silly pop-up thermometer out of it, so I left it in.
This was a last minute decision, so I didn't have much time for a marinade. I used a home-mixed Cajun spice, relatively low on salt, as a dry rub and let'er sit in the fridge for about 4 hours.
We put it in to cook at 3:00. (My first fatty is next to it, but that will be another thread.) The smoker was set to 225 with a mix of pellets I had lying around, some mesquite, apple and hickory. I was just using up some small leftovers. I went out to run some errands and when I came back around 5:30, the temp was already at 140. I had figured to stop at that point, but we weren't going to eat until 7:00 at the earliest. That left me with a dilemma. I didn't want to take it off, cool it down and reheat just a couple of hours later. But being at 140, it seemed dangerous to let it sit at that temp for too long. It would settle down into the "danger zone" and sit there. So I decided to heat it up to almost 150, pull it, wrap it and put it in a styrofoam cooler. That way, as the temp settled, it would be above the danger zone, at least for a while.
When I removed it from the cooler at 7:00, I could still see steam rising, so I figured I was OK safety-wise. I was concerned that it had continued to cook too much, but the slicing proved otherwise. It was more medium rare than rare, but quite tasty. The smoke really penetrated the meat..
This was a last minute decision, so I didn't have much time for a marinade. I used a home-mixed Cajun spice, relatively low on salt, as a dry rub and let'er sit in the fridge for about 4 hours.
We put it in to cook at 3:00. (My first fatty is next to it, but that will be another thread.) The smoker was set to 225 with a mix of pellets I had lying around, some mesquite, apple and hickory. I was just using up some small leftovers. I went out to run some errands and when I came back around 5:30, the temp was already at 140. I had figured to stop at that point, but we weren't going to eat until 7:00 at the earliest. That left me with a dilemma. I didn't want to take it off, cool it down and reheat just a couple of hours later. But being at 140, it seemed dangerous to let it sit at that temp for too long. It would settle down into the "danger zone" and sit there. So I decided to heat it up to almost 150, pull it, wrap it and put it in a styrofoam cooler. That way, as the temp settled, it would be above the danger zone, at least for a while.
When I removed it from the cooler at 7:00, I could still see steam rising, so I figured I was OK safety-wise. I was concerned that it had continued to cook too much, but the slicing proved otherwise. It was more medium rare than rare, but quite tasty. The smoke really penetrated the meat..
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