Cooking a giant chunk of meat, such as a four-pound lumb leg, might seem daunting. Once you try it, though, you’ll find it is the easiest thing to do. This lamb leg dish is a great choice, whether you’re cooking for two for a simple meal or preparing a main dish for a dinner party of six. I chose to use a pressure cooker for this dish instead of the usual braising or baking method, to show you another option. It requires minimal active cooking time and cooks the lamb leg until very tender in just 40 minutes. If this is your first time visiting my blog, you might find it strange that I’m talking about lamb in the context of Chinese cooking. In fact, lamb is a very popular meat in many provinces of China and is considered a staple in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, where the majority of inhabitants are Muslim. I’ve shared quite a few Chinese lamb dishes on the blog so far, including lamb fried noodles (Ding Ding Chao Mian), baked lamb dumplings, lamb pilaf, and lamb skewers. The flavoring in this recipe is different than in my previous lamb recipes. It uses the Northern style soy-sauce-based seasoning to create a savory lamb dish that goes great with rice and noodles.
The traditional way of cooking this dish is boiling the lamb first, and then braising it until tender. When the weather starts to get warm, I find keeping my stove on for many hours on a sunny Sunday afternoon less than appealing. So I resorted to my new favorite kitchen tool – the Instant Pot. I’ve talked about my experience with the Instant Pot in a previous post. To describe it in one sentence, Instant Pot is an electric cooking appliance that combines a slow cooker, pressure cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, steamer, and saute pan. There is only one problem when using a pressure cooker to braise large chunk of meat – the meat usually ends up plain, due to the very short cooking time. So here, we need to marinate the meat before cooking. You can use the same method when braising any other type of meat in pressure cooker.
The rest of it is very easy. Brown the lamb, put the lamb leg and the marinade in the pressure cooker, and cook at high pressure for 40 minutes. Then you’ll get melt-in-your-mouth tender and juicy lamb meat, with no need to monitor the pot. There are many ways to use pressure-cooked lamb meat. You see, even if you are just cooking for two, you can save the leftovers and use the lamb in many different ways later. So, no worries about serving the same dish all over again. That’s it for today!
If you give this recipe a try, let us know! Leave a comment, rate it (once you’ve tried it), and take a picture and tag it #omnivorescookbook on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with. Cheers, friends!
