It's almost Easter and after all the recent snow from the 'Beast from the East' had cleared it was time to fire up the barbeque again, and no other way than a bone out leg of lamb. I love tea, particularly Earl Grey, and have wanted to use it more culinary purposes for ages. I have used Earl Grey mixed in with oak dust for cold smoking but I've yet to taste any discernible difference. So, I decided to use Earl Grey as the main part of the aromatic marinade. Usually I'd go heavy on the garlic and rosemary for lamb but this was to be a far cry from my usual taste.
The result was excellent, the Earl Grey was subtle despite being used in quite a concentrated mix. The lamb (eventually) pulled brilliantly to give nice shreds to go into a wrap, rendering all that sweet fat you get from lamb.
I made the marinade by adding the boiling water to the Earl Grey tea bags and letting them steep along with the other marinade ingredients. When they were cool I added the leg of lamb (bone out in this case) and let it marinade overnight.
After It had marinated I rubbed it well all over with the dry rub mix below. I then lit the Weber setup for indirect and got it up to around 275F and added a slice of cherry wood. The lamb went on for about 5hrs until it had reached 195F internal temperature. I took it out the smoker and let it rest for about 20mins before trying to pull it into shred. Unfortunately it wasn't pulling into despite reaching 195F internal temp.
I had already let the Weber run down at this point and in fact at this stage it wasn't going to be taking on anymore smoke so I chucked the whole thing into the slow cooker on high with some of the marinade and a glug of red wine. I let it cook for a further 2 hrs in the slow cooker at which point it was falling apart and into nice shreds. I used a meat probe to test how hot it was in the slow cooker now it had really fallen apart and it was 210F. In this case I'm not sure I'd do anything different next time, if the smoker was still going then I'd add the marinade and red wine and put it back on wrapped in foil quite happily till it reached 210F, then remove and pull.
In the end I served it in some wraps with lettuce, cucumber, pomegranate seeds and a special slaw. This special slaw was a mix of sweetheart cabbage, carrot, mayo, natural yogurt, mint sauce, cider vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper.
Marinade
5 posh Earl Grey tea bags
500ml boiling water
Zest and juice of one orange
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sumaq
4 tbsps red wine vinegar
Dry Rub
3 tbsps pink Himalayan sea salt
3 tbsps soft brown sugar
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground white pepper
1 tsp sumaq
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp garlic powder
