FIRE ROASTED LAMB ON THE HOMESTEAD - Cooking Lamb On A Spit - DELICIOUS!
A fire roasted whole lamb on a spit is something that most people will never get to enjoy. It takes time and effort to pull this off and do it correctly. It also takes experience. Thankfully, we have that here on the homestead in abundance. We have roasted a few of these every year.
We are blessed to have a really nice sized pit here on the homestead that works well for this task. We are also blessed to have the right equipment that was gifted to us by one of our Patrons. Having an off grid homestead bears the necessity to have multiple ways to cook your food. Historically among cultures in the past and even in the present day, an animal roast was a celebratory event. This is also the case with this occaision.
Although we are slowing growing our sheep herd on the homestead, the lamb was donated by another Steemian, @shalomacres.
So we have the lamb, we have a spit, we have a suitable firepit. Let's get started!
THE LAYOUT
The equipment is laid out on our stainless steel counter in the homestead outdoor kitchen. The tools include everything we will need to attach our lamb firmly to the spit and ensure an even roast.
The equipment you see here can be purchased at a website called SPITJACK (link at the end of the post).
Next is the lamb itself. The lamb needs to be field dressed and head removed with hooves removed at the knuckles mid-length. The body cavity needs to be clean and rinsed. If you are preparing this outdoors, it's best to be a fall event as the colder temperatures help to prevent bacterial growth and cut down on insects interfering with the process.
And then you will want your body cavity veggies and fruits to fill your lamb. The body cavity will be sewn together with butchers twine and meat needle later. Include whatever fruits or veggies and spices that you prefer.
First off, preposition your leg shackles and first spit fork on the spit before your mounting of the lamb takes place. This is because you will want a shackle and spit fork on each end of your lamb.
It's up to you which end of the lamb goes on which side of the spit. We started below with the neck end. Insert the end of the lamb all the way on the fork and attach your leg shackels.
Make sure all the wingnuts are tight so that the lamb is secure on the shackles and can't slip out. Your shackles and spit fork shouldn't move at all on the spit. A simple hand tightening should be fine.
Next move to the other end of your lamb and position your other spit fork and shackels if you have them.
Insert your spit fork and hand tighten to the spit. There should be no movement of the forks on the spit. Attach your shackels if you have them or wire the legs together to prevent unwanted movement with stainless steel wire.
Next we need to attach the backbone to the spit. For this, we have a Rotisserie Trussing U-Bolt and plate. This is also able to be purchase at SpitJack(link at the end of the post).
Push the u-bolt firmly stradeling the backbone and spit inside the body cavity and out the other side. It may take a bit of pressure to push through.
Once you are through, attack the plate and tighten the wingnuts fairly tight. Be your own judge on how tight you want to go. This is just an extra step to stabilize the lamb on the spit.
Next you are going to cut up all those fruits and veggies to insert into the body cavity before we sew it all up. Include apples, lemons, maybe a hot pepper or two and whatever spice mix you enjoy.
Take your butchers twine and meat needle and sew up the body cavity trapping all that flavor adding goodness inside! The juices of these ingredients will steam and permeate the flesh the backstraps and add some amazing flavors. Feel free to toss in a little salt and brown sugar in there as well.
FIRE INSTRUCTIONS
You will want to start your fire about 2 hours or so ahead of beginning the actual roasting process. This is to ensure you have an adequate bed of coals for roasting. Cooking this lamb is more about coals and not flames. Hot coals are what you are after. So build a huge fire ahead of time and keep building it and then let it die down to coals and then just feed it slowly to keep it going adding little chuncks of wood at a time.
Normally I will have someone else doing this task so I can concentrate on prepping the lamb.
That's it. We have the lamb cooking and in about 3-4 hours depending on the size of the animal, it's ready to eat!
For more information on the spit and tools, visit: https://www.spitjack.com/
Special thanks to the Schnebly family for providing the spit and roasting tools to the homestead.
ENJOY THE VIDEO!
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Looks like a lot of work but I'm sure it is WELL worth it! How many people did that lamb feed? How much meat did you get?
The bones were picked pretty clean after about a 100 people had their fill.
My entire family enjoyed it, that was six mouths!
Forgive me my jealousy, Your spit looks way better than mine! Mine was picked from grandpas feild so it's a little rustic looking. thank you for including the basting ingredients, I always have trouble finding a good taste. Looking forward to trying it out!! Thanks for sharing!!
This was one of the tastiest meals I've ever had. I'm already been asking @jal627 to get us a spitjack! Is this how you do your lamb for Passover? I'm thinking that's what I would like to do! :)
It was nice to be there to enjoy it!
That looks awesome, we live in the deep south and not many Lambs here but we do roast Goats on occasion as well as Pigs.
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Oh man, this looks sooo much easier than how I've been doing it. Then again, I have improvised without proper equipment. I'll be sure to check out this setup. Thanks for the link.
That looks like some proper nourishment to me!
We ate so much lamb this sukkot! Nice tutorial on the spit roast.
how to cook very great ... regards from users of homesteading ..