Roast Lamb with Ginger Beer for Easter Sunday

This Easter, Sainsbury's have produced a series of little twists, new takes on traditional, favourite recipes. 

We tried out the lamb in ginger beer, and it went down very well.  I'm a big fan of cooking with fizzy drink - gammon in cola, chicken in lemonade and duck in orangeade have all been popular in our house.  We're actually away for Easter, so we got to enjoy our Easter Sunday roast with all the trimmings a little early.

ROAST LAMB WITH GINGER BEER

Serves: 6 plus leftovers
Prep time: 10mins plus resting Cooking time: 2 hours plus resting

·      1.5kg leg of lamb


·      6 cloves garlic, sliced


·      2cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled & sliced


·      1tsp cumin seeds


·      1tbsp olive oil


·      1 onion, cut into wedges


·      2 carrots, cut into chunks


·      3tbsp British plain flour


·      50ml no-added-sugar fiery ginger beer


·      250ml chicken stock, made with

·      1 chicken stock cube

Preheat the oven to 190°C, fan 170°C, gas 5.

Put the leg of lamb on a board and make small slits all over the joint. Press some of the sliced garlic and ginger and a few cumin seeds into each. Rub the oil into the joint.

Put the onion wedges and carrots in a large roasting tin and toss with 2 tablespoons of the flour. Sit the lamb on top and pour in the ginger beer and stock. Roast in the oven for 1 hour. Roast for a further 30 minutes for medium- pink lamb, 50 minutes for well-done.

Remove the lamb from the tin, cover with foil and let rest for 20 minutes. Pour the roasting juices from the tin into a small pan over a medium heat and simmer for 5 minutes, until slightly reduced. Make a paste with the remaining flour and 4 tablespoons water. Whisk into the gravy until thickened.

Strain the gravy (keep the veg to make a soup). Carve the lamb and serve with the gravy, roast potatoes and the vegetables of your choice.

We're following a gluten-free diet at the moment, so I omitted the flour, and added a little red wine (what? I can't be expected to give up everything!!) to the gravy and it was delicious, really deep and flavoursome with the unmistakable zing of ginger.  The sweetness of the ginger beer balanced out the strength of the garlic. It's definitely a recipe I'll be using again and a perfect centrepiece for the Easter table.

Check out some of the other Easter Little Twists too, including eggs Benedict with avocado and hot cross buns with bacon.   There's some really exciting things going on at Sainsbury's at the moment.  I was pleased to attend their Spring/Summer preview of some of their new food ranges recently and was delighted by some of the new gluten-free products.  Can't wait for them to hit the stores.

Disclosure: I was sent a voucher to purchase the ingredients for this dish.