Pulled lamb with plum-sriracha
- Preparation and cooking time
- Total time
- + marinating
- Easy
- Serves 6
Ingredients
- 3 red onions, 1 roughly chopped, 2 finely chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 10cm chunk ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
- 150g sriracha
- 100g tomato ketchup
- 100ml rice vinegar
- 50g runny honey
- 2 tsp Chinese 5-spice,
- 5 ripe plums, stoned and chopped
- 1 large (2.5kg-3kg) whole shoulder of lamb
- 500ml ginger beer
Method
- STEP 1
Put the roughly chopped onion, garlic, ginger, sriracha, ketchup, vinegar, honey, five-spice and plums in a blender or food processor with 1 tsp salt, and whizz to a paste. Put the lamb in a roasting tin on top of the finely chopped onions and massage the marinade all over. Leave in the fridge for at least 24 hours, or up to 2 days.
- STEP 2
Remove the lamb from the fridge about an hour before you want to start cooking it, and heat the oven to 160C/fan 140C/gas 3. Pour the ginger beer around the lamb, and cover the tin tightly with foil. Bake for 4 hours. Remove the foil, give the lamb a good baste, and increase the heat to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Bake for a further 1 hour 30 minutes, basting every 30 minutes plus turning the shoulder halfway. At the end the lamb should be really tender and blackening, and the saucy glaze dramatically reduced.
- STEP 3
Pour (or ladle) off the sauce into a jug, letting the oil settle to the top, and cover the lamb loosely with foil to keep warm.
- STEP 4
Spoon off the oily layer from the top of the sauce, then transfer to a serving bowl or jug. If you want it smooth like ketchup, you can blend it at this stage. Shred the lamb at the table, pulling meat from the bone and mixing with the sauce as you go or, for ease of entertaining, shred all the meat with a couple of forks, then serve from the tin using a pair of tongs.
