Roast/Grilled butterflied leg of lamb in pita's

[Aegis]

Well I have marinated the lamb and have the dough made for the pitas. My thought is to have the oven up to temp for pitas and grill lamb first with coals and then let the lamb rest, while I roll out and bake the pitas.
If anyone has done this before, roasting/grilling lamb and has some pointers I would love to hear from you! I would hate to ruin a great piece of meat
Thanks in Advance
John

[Aegis]

Re: Roast/Grilled butterflied leg of lamb in pita's

Ok I finally have some time to report on the results. I made a marinade of fresh minced Rosemary, garlic, oregano, and olive oil. Marinaded the butterflied leg of lamb in that four five hours. Got the WFO up to about 650 degrees and set up the tuscan grill with an extension borrowed from my gas grill. Put skewers in the lamb cross wise to prevent the lamb from curling on the grill. Set the lamb on the grill skin side down and grilled it for 15 minutes on that side. I kept rotating the lamb to keep the sides closest to the inside of the oven, from burning too much. After 15 minutes I flipped it over and cooked until internal temp was 125 degrees in the thick part. It was 137 degrees in the thinner parts. That made for a good variety of doneness (is that a word?) for the guests who like their meat rare to medium.
While the meat was resting, I cleaned the oven floor by moving the coals to one side and then mopping the floor. I rolled out the pitas and started baking them on a 600 degree oven floor! Well them babies puffed up almost as soon as they hit the floor! My wife put out the chopped toppings of lettuce, tomatoes, onion and tzatziki sauce.
Good News: The meat was not ruined!
Bad news: It came out good, but not as good as when I slow roast a whole leg in a convetional oven. did I say that? yeah I should have seasoned it more in line with my old way of roasting lamb.
Good News: It was actually better the next day! The lamb was cooked medium rare to rare, which is the way we like it.
Bad news: Cut too long for pita consumption. I sliced it real thin, but in 3-4 inch long strips. difficult to eat. Simple fix for second pita - cut slices into samller pieces.
Things to do different-
1) Better seasoning, putting cloves of garlic in the meat, not just in the marinade.
2) for pitas- cut into smaller pieces
Here are some pics of the tuscan grilling adventure, please if anyone has suggestions I would love to hear from you!
ps I baked some bread the next day.

[Aegis]

Re: Roast/Grilled butterflied leg of lamb in pita's

Hi Doug,
I know the pics didn't show it nor did I mention it, but I did have some hot coals under the grill. The pics were taken with the grill pulled out so my lovely photographer/wife could take the pictures without her hair getting on fire. Now that would have been funny! Anyways I love the idea of making the cuts and using the lemon in the marinade for the acid and the better penetration.
Doug, as always your food looks fantastic, this was my first real grilling event and I am still getting used to the oven and management. I am slow on changing the way I do things, like heating the oven up and having pizza, then next day baking and using the oven on the cooling cycle so to speak. Only last week did I start using it on the heat up cycle and that does change the way things can be done and opens a lot more possibilities! So in short - I am a slow learner.
Thanks for the suggestions and I will do the next one using the lemon and slashing method!

Tonight we had barbequed chicken in the oven. This is my wife's technique which the neighbor stole. She grills the chicken for 10-15 minutes on the grill to char the skin and bastes some sauce on the chicken. Then it goes into a roasting pans with bbq sauce, covered for two/three hours at about 300 degree oven. She sometimes does a combo of pork ribs and chicken in which case she cooks it longer.
Actually tonight the neighbor did the chicken and brought it over to use the oven at 330 degrees. It was in there for almost three hours and was great!
Again Thanks
John