Recipe: Slow Roasted Greek Style Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Oregano, Potatoes, and Swiss Chard

Slow Food Cooking with Less Fuss, More Flavor (and One Pan!)


This one pan meal is well worth the wait—and it tastes even better the next day.

It's easy to know what's in season and what everybody's cooking if you're plugged into the online food world. Since this is Memorial Day weekend, food blogs, foodie magazine websites, and e-mail in-boxes are overflowing with grilling tips, potluck recipes, picnic ideas, cool refreshing drinks, and ice cream.

So what am I suggesting you do? Turn on the oven and slow roast a leg of lamb for four and a half hours of course. Just because I raise sheep doesn't mean I always follow the flock.

Until we fell in love with grilled lamb legs steaks* a few years ago, I cooked all of our legs of lamb the same way: slathered with a thick layer of an onion and herb mixture similar to the one I put on my Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs, cooked just until rare, and served as thick slices. This is an entirely different way to prepare leg of lamb, and I've fallen head over heels for it.

Unlike traditional roasted leg of lamb recipes, this one cooks for several hours, but the actual prep work is minimal—and the entire meal uses just one big pan.

With this method, the meat is cooked until extremely well done, but in a really good way. It comes apart with a fork, is sort of 'dry' like barbecue, and the texture is similar to my Slow Cooked Dutch Oven Lamb Shanks or Shoulder Roasts, only with some crunchy edges, which I think are the best part. The cooking time is also fairly flexible—which can come in quite handy—and it's pretty much impossible to overcook.

This recipe is adapted from one I found in Falling Cloudberries, a delightful cookbook written by Tessa Kiros, the London-born daughter of a Finnish mother and a Greek-Cypriot father who grew up in South Africa, traveled and cooked around the world, and now lives in Tuscany with her Italian husband and two daughters.

Full of color photos and friendly stories, this is the kind of book that's fun to sit down and lose yourself in for half an hour, even if you have no intention of cooking anything for the next month.

Other recipes I hope to try soon include Pork in Red Wine with Dried Coriander (Afelia); Cypriot Baked Lamb and Potatoes with Cumin and Tomatoes (Tava); Cannellini Bean Purée with Olive Oil, Garlic and Sage; Roast Chicken with Grainy Mustard, Onions, and Herbs; Red Pepper Soup with Olives, Lemon Zest, and Yogurt; Olive Oil Picnic Bread with Oven Roasted Tomatoes; Lemon Ice Cream; Apple Cake with Toffee Topping; and Ricotta Tart with a Chocolate Crust.

Tessa Kiros is also the author of Apples for Jam: A Colorful Cookbook, a playful book that offers anecdotal memories about family, friends, and the joys of childhood alongside its 200 easy, kid-friendly, comfort food recipes, at least two dozen of which I have marked with post-it notes.

Both books celebrate the use of fresh, seasonal ingredients and would make wonderful gifts for food lovers.

Since I think many of you would really enjoy these books, I'm giving away two hardcover copies of Falling Cloudberries. To enter, simply leave a comment in this post telling us something (anything!) about food and/or travel from somewhere around the world. The contest is over - thanks for all your great entries!


This is truly a one pan meal.

Slow Roasted Greek Style Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Oregano, Potatoes, and Swiss Chard
Serves at least 4 - Total cooking time 3½ to 4½ hours
Adapted from Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros

**Click here to print this recipe**

Don't let the long instructions scare you away—this really is a simple recipe. Lamb with lemon and oregano is a classic Greek combination I hadn't had before, and now I'm hooked on it.

I used Tessa's recipe as a starting point and ran with it (which she encourages you to do throughout the book), adding lots of garlic, using fresh Greek oregano from the kitchen garden rather than dried, upping the lemony factor by chopping the juiced lemon halves into chunks and roasting them along with the potatoes, and making a ridiculously tasty side dish by braising Swiss chard and raisins in the lemony olive oil-filled roasting pan for about ten minutes while the cooked meat cooled.

Swiss chard, which is both extremely cold and heat tolerant, is one of my favorite things to grow from seed. Find out how easy it is to grow your own Swiss chard here.

The chunks of roasted lemons (don't you just love the sound of those two words together, 'roasted lemons?') are quite tart, but they almost melt in your mouth. I couldn't stop eating them. If not everyone you're feeding is a lemonhead, you could put the lemon chunks in one corner of the roasting pan rather than tossing them with the potatoes—or simply leave them out.

The leg of lamb cut we get is called an American style roast; it has the bone attached, but no shank. This recipe would probably also work well with a lamb shoulder roast.

I cooked this up while my hunky farmguy Joe was out of town recently and happily ate a bowl of leftovers every day for a week—sometimes even for breakfast, and usually with a dollop of sour cream stirred into it all. The flavors just kept getting better.



When I ran out of potatoes, I started making lamb nachos with the shredded meat. Yum.

I can't wait to make this during the summer, when I'll probably cook it in the evening after it's cooled down some, then serve it the next day for lunch alongside tzatziki made with garden cucumbers (I've been meaning to try this tzatziki recipe for ages) and lots of thick slices of juicy, vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes.

As always, I urge you to seek out local and organic ingredients. Search for a source of local naturally raised, grass-fed lamb—as well as all kinds of other sustainably produced food—on Local Harvest.

A digital kitchen scale is a worthwhile kitchen investment that makes life so much easier. I love my Oxo Good Grips 11-pound scale and often use it several times a day. It's also great for weighing postage. A heavy stainless steel roasting pan has so many uses (like making big batches of apple or pear butter) and is perfect for roasting vegetables because the tall sides allow you to easily stir everything around.

4½ to 5 pound grass-fed, bone-in leg of lamb

2 large organic lemons

7 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

Salt & freshly ground pepper

4 Tablespoons chopped fresh Greek oregano, divided

1 cup water (you may need a little more)

2 to 3 pounds organic Yukon Gold potatoes

6 or more garlic cloves, separated but unpeeled

Two or more large handfuls of Swiss chard leaves (save the stems for another use), chopped into pieces if they're really big

Large handful of organic raisins

Optional sides:

Sour cream or Greek yogurt

Tzatziki or cucumber salad

Sliced garden tomatoes

Heat the oven to 425°. Trim the leg of lamb of any excess fat (ours never have any) and set it in a heavy stainless steel roasting pan. Halve the lemons, squeeze out the juice (I use a little hand held citrus reamer over an itty bitty strainer to catch the seeds), and, if desired, cut the juiced lemon halves into chunks.

Combine the lemon juice and 3 Tablespoons of olive oil in a small dish and use a fork or whisk to combine. Pour the mixture over the lamb, rubbing it into the meat with your fingers. Season with salt and several grinds of fresh pepper, and then sprinkle with 2 Tablespoons of the oregano.

Pour 1 cup of water into the pan around the lamb.

Cook for 30 minutes, then take the roasting pan out of the oven and turn the leg over. Add more water to the pan if most of it has evaporated.

Season with salt and pepper, sprinkle with 1 Tablespoon of the oregano, and cook for another 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and cut them into bite-size pieces. Take the roasting pan out of the oven. Scatter the potatoes and lemon chunks (if desired) in the pan around the lamb, turning them over with a large spoon to coat them in the juice.

Sprinkle them with salt and pepper and the last Tablespoon of oregano, then drizzle with 4 Tablespoons of olive oil. Add a little more water to the pan if most of it has evaporated.

Cover the roasting pan tightly with foil, decrease the oven to 350°, and cook for 1½ hours.

Take the roasting pan out of the oven and turn the lamb over. Scatter the garlic cloves among the potatoes, stir the potatoes, replace the foil loosely over the pan, and cook for 1 hour.

The lamb can be eaten at this point, but if you prefer it browner, let it cook, uncovered, for another hour or so (without stirring the potatoes if you want them to brown a little), until the edges of the meat become crisp.

Set the lamb on a large platter and cover lightly with foil. Move the potatoes to one side of the roasting pan, tilt the pan slightly so the juice runs to the empty half, and toss in the Swiss chard leaves (which will cook way down) and the raisins, stirring them into the juice and then spreading them out. Cook for about 10 minutes, or until the Swiss chard is wilted, stirring once or twice.

Slice or pull the lamb from the bone with a fork and serve warm with the potatoes and Swiss chard and/or other suggested sides. Squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins and mix them into the potatoes or spread them on warm slices of crusty bread.

You might also enjoy these other Less Fuss, More Flavor lamb recipes:

Lamb Burgers with Garlic, Shallots, & Feta on Homemade Rosemary Focaccia

Grilled Lamb Burgers with Roasted Red Pepper, Parsley, & Kalamata Olive Relish from Cooking with Shelburne Farms

Easy Ground Lamb & Feta Stuffed Mushrooms

Onion & Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs and Grilled Lamb Leg Steaks

Slow Roasted Dutch Oven Lamb Shoulder Roasts or Shanks with Tomatoes, Onions, Garlic, & Rosemary

Still hungry? You'll find links to all my sweet and savory Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the Farmgirl Fare Recipe Index.

*We do eat some of the animals that we raise here on the farm. You can read more about my meat eating philosophy in this post. And if you're in Missouri and are interested in buying one of our naturally raised grass-fed lambs, custom processed and packaged to your specifications and then frozen, please e-mail me for more information: farmgirlfare AT gmail DOT com.

© FarmgirlFare.com, the slow cooked foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories, and photos from her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.