The easiest and cheapest way to zhush up a plain roast lamb: Easy Peasy Sweet Chilli Lamb

We eat a lot of meat because we live on a lifestyle block and we raise our own animals to process for the freezer. While it is all good and dandy when our freezer is chockablock full with beef, lamb, pork and venison, things get a bit repetitive a few months down the track. When stocks run lean, and we’re eating one main protein for the better part of a week—usually lamb, since they’re easiest to process as needed—I have to get creative in the kitchen so we don’t get sick of it.

I know it doesn’t sound like a dilemma, but trust me, when you’ve already had lamb three times in one week, sometimes going a fourth feels a bit like a letdown haha.

Cook it from frozen!

As a single-income family with two preschoolers at home, when it comes to experimenting with recipes, I always lean on the thrifty side. That means using as few ingredients as possible and sticking to my standard “meat and three veg” rule for most weeknight dinners.

So this recipe—which I’ve humbly named Easy Peasy Sweet Chilli Lamb—is a total fave. It gives a plain old roast lamb leg a completely different flavour profile, and it’s super budget-friendly because it only uses one extra ingredient besides the lamb itself.

This recipe is also my ultimate lifesaver for days when I’ve completely forgotten to pull the roast out of the freezer the night before. It cooks up brilliantly directly from a frozen leg, but it works just as amazingly with a thawed one too.

Method

First things first: preheat your oven to 160°C fan bake.

Select your roasting dish or tray, place the leg of lamb inside (frozen or thawed, both work!), and fill the bottom of the dish with water. You want enough water so it won’t evaporate in 30 seconds, but not so deep that you’re boiling the joint.

Next, grab a bottle of sweet chilli sauce, pour a generous splash right over the top, and use your hands to rub it all over the exposed sides of the leg.

Then, chuck it straight into the oven! If you’re cooking from frozen, it will usually take about an hour longer than a thawed leg, depending on the size of the roast.

I love this recipe because it’s literally one extra ingredient, but yields maximum flavour. The sweet chilli sauce bakes into a sticky, savoury-sweet crispy skin on the outside, while the sauce that drips down into the water gets absorbed back into the meat as it roasts. Don’t worry about it being too spicy for little ones either—it’s super mild, though I usually keep the ultra-crispy outer bits for myself just in case!