Last week I was able to grab about 5 Lamb Shoulders at a fairly reasonable price. I had personally never BBQ’d a lamb shoulder before although the chef at Buster Rhino’s has and he raved about how great it was so I thought I would give it a go.
True Lamb shoulder comes as the front portion of the Lamb. If your butcher asks you, the shoulder you want would be about 3-5lbs (2kg) if it’s in the 10lb (4kg) range then you should ask him to cut it in half.
For this Lamb shoulder I decided to use a Traeger for two reasons, I am taping a show this week and wanted to have a newer Traeger there for taping and to put it simply, I love Traeger. So the group at Traeger Eastern Canada have graciously supplied one to me for this purpose. I opted for the Junior as I hadn’t tried that model yet and really liked the idea of a really small unit for easy transport.
The rub I opted to use was just a classic Mediterranean style spice and herb mixture. This rub consisted of Kosher Salt, Cracked Black Pepper, Dried Lemon Zest, Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, Onion, and Garlic. A quick coating of mustard and the the rub was liberally applied over the entire shoulder.
The Traeger Junior was set at 225 at ~8 am and the shoulders were on. I knew that the size these shoulders were at if pork would be about 8 hours and I was hoping the same sort of muscle and fat structure would take these to the 3:30 – 4pm mark as Beth had to leave for Los Angeles. We used maple pellets which really paired well with the lamb when it was done.
Almost exactly at 3:30 the shoulders were done, I removed them from the smoker and tented / rest the Lamb for 30 minutes.
I must say this was in my top 5 every meats that I have either cooked or tasted from anyone / anywhere else. It was truly a fantastic meal, the entire family (except Little Man) ate a fully true share. Even Beth who isn’t a lamb fan went back for THIRDS.
Lamb Shoulder is 100% now in the cooking rotation at our house.
