How to Smoke a Whole Lamb Leg

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If you love lamb and enjoy smoking meats, look no further for a juicy, flavorful smoked whole lamb leg recipe – this one is simple and delicious!

A few years ago, I thought to source our Thanksgiving turkey from a local farm, and in that search I found Evans Family Farms. They are a farm local(ish) to my area and while they no longer had any turkeys available by the time I thought to look, they did have whole chicken, so that was our first order. Shortly after we ordered a rack of lamb for Christmas dinner and quickly subscribed to their monthly meat subscription box. Through Evans Family Farm we get up to 24 lbs of local, pasture raised, non-GMO fed chicken, beef, pork, and lamb every month.

Because we love lamb in this house, we chose to include that in the meat options for our subscription, so we will often get lamb products in our box. But, this month we got something we have never gotten before, a whole lamb leg!

I knew immediately I wanted to smoke this beautiful piece of meat.

Since learning how to use this cooking method, I have really enjoyed smoking meats. It is a great way to cook bigger cuts of meat and you really don’t even need any special equipment. As long as you have a charcoal grill you can smoke meat.

Over the years Christopher has collected four Weber grills, two as gifts and two found at thrift stores. Weber grills are perfect for long, slow smoking of meats as long as you set up the coals and place the meat in the right position. The key to your charcoal set up is to put the coals toward the outside of the bowl.

I prefer to use lump charcoal in my grilling, and in this case, I also added hickory wood chips. I put the coals and wood chips up against one side of the grill to create an environment for indirect heat, which is key to smoking meat. Once I started a fire in the Weber kettle, I went back to season the meat, while waiting for the grill to heat up.

While waiting for the coals to heat up, I season the lamb with a dry rub that consists of salt, pepper, onion salt, garlic powder, and Herbs de Provence. Best practice is to mix all the seasonings together in a bowl before rubbing on the meat, which allows for consistency of seasoning distribution as you apply it to the meat.

Once you have rubbed the seasonings on the lamb and your grill has heated up, which mine was about 250(F) degrees when I add the meat. Since we are smoking this meat we want a low, slow heat with the meat placed on the grate opposite of the heat to avoid direct heat.

Now that you have put the meat on the grill, replace the lid, and let smoke. The cook time time needed will vary based on the size of your meat, in my case we had a 4lbs lamb leg took about 3 hours to smoke. I would recommend checking the meat after about an hour and a half to assess if the meat needs to be rotated or the coals adjusted.

It is at this point we added some potatoes off the heat on the grill to accompany the lamb, simply rub oil, salt, and pepper on the potato before adding to the grill (no aluminum foil needed). Let the potatoes cook for the rest of the time the meat is on or until the potatoes are soft throughout.

Once the lamb has cooked and internal temperature reaches 145(F) degrees, it can be removed from the heat. It does not need to rest as long as other red meats, but you do want to let it rest for about 3-5 minutes before starting to cut into it to serve.

After letting it rest, it is time to serve up this beautiful smoked whole lamb leg! We served ours with a baked potato, homemade sourdough, and a salad.

For dessert see this recipe for Grandma Kay’s Lemon Bars.