Why butterfly a leg of lamb?

Butterflying a leg of lamb involves removing the bones and opening up the leg to flatten it out. It opens up like butterfly wings hence the name . The beauty of this approach is that you can cook a leg of lamb quicker than when it is on the bone and it cooks evenly.

As a result, it's is a perfect way of preparing a leg for barbecuing or roasting in the oven when time is short. The lamb also takes on a lot of flavour when preparing it like this, as there is a greater surface area of meat exposed to any marinade.

Other interesting ways of preparing a leg of lamb

• Cutting into primal cuts (shank, top rump, topside, silverside)
• Tunnel boning

Technique

Below is the full video of this technique as well as specific points of interest you can jump to directly.

Boning

1. Remove any large pieces of fat
2. Remove the H bone
3. Remove the tendon and the shank bone
4. Remove the second bone
5. Remove the kneecap

Butterflying

1. Opening out the seam below the shank
2. Removing the first gland
3. Opening out the top rump
4. Removing the second gland
5. Open out the topside
6. Trimming remaining sinew