[Can you give us some pointers on smoking lamb?]

Jeffrey Cohen--

I picked up a small (3 lb.) boneless lamb shoulder roast recently. It was rolled in a kind of net. I rubbed it with salt, pepper, garlic powder and oregano and put it in my Cookshack smoker (an electric Lazy-Q smoker). I used oak and some hickory pellets for smoke. I gave it 5 hours at 180-190F. The 5 hours smoking time related more to how much time I had than anything scientific, but I thought that would be a good guess. The internal temperature was 143F when I took it out. It was pink, tender and delicious, and that's how we like 'em.

I made a thin sauce out of roughly equal parts rice vinegar, Dijon mustard and mirin (sweet cooking sake). It occurred to me later that this would make a good last second glaze in the style of Danny Gaulden's mustard glaze for ribs (see Danny's rib post). The sauce was pretty tasty, but next time I'll try it with raspberry vinegar instead of rice vinegar. And maybe honey might be better than mirin. Heck, I could change the mustard to horseradish and no one would ever recognize me.

Glenn the BBQCHEF--

In a recent barbecue competition, I used a rack of lamb and had the butcher take off the fat lip and had him remove the backbone. I dry rubbed it with black pepper, garlic, onion, tarragon, basil and sugar. I put it on the grill for about 5 min on each side to give it an even brown then moved it off the direct heat, closed the lid and at about 350F smoked it for 20 min. Took it off 10 min before judging and then sliced it between the bones. The middle of the eye, about the size of a quarter, was rare, not dripping rare, but cooked rare. I cooked two of these and gave one batch to the judges and sampled one for myself. I knew there was no way I could lose. It was so tender and tasty. I saw most of my competition dipping their lamb in tomato sauce. You can't do that to lamb; you have to be a purist with lamb.

William Ackerman--

Did a garlicky/minty leg of lamb in the smoker yesterday and it came out so good I thought I'd share with the porch. Rather than insert slivers of garlic into the meat and apply a rub to the surface, I applied an herb puree to the inside of a boned, butterflied leg and rolled and tied it up.

Ackerman's Lamb Puree Marinade

I rubbed the outside with oil, salt and pepper. Cooked at about 250F with cherry wood until internal temperature was 130F (medium rare).

This was adapted from the Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook (ISBN 0-385-48210-8).