
Butterflying a leg of lamb
Tom Hill - Head Butcher at Turner & George
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
- Remove any large pieces of fat
- Remove the H bone
- Remove the tendon and the shank bone
- Remove the second bone
- Remove the kneecap
Butterflying
- Opening out the seam below the shank
- Removing the first gland
- Opening out the top rump
- Removing the second gland
- Open out the topside
- Trimming remaining sinew