Friday night always used to include a meat kebab complete with some rather manky-looking salad and lashing of hot chilli sauce after a night on the booze. We never really wanted to know what the "meat" actually was, if we're honest, but this recipe uses top-quality lamb and the results are outstanding!
Firstly we took a boned-out lamb shoulder and marinaded in a spicy paste. To make the paste, toast 1tsp each of cumin seeds, fennel seeds, coriander seeds in a dry frying pan until they start to smell aromatic. Coarse grind the seeds with 1/2 tsp black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and add 2tsp sweet smoked paprika, a good pinch of cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, leaves from 2 sprigs fresh rosemary finely chopped, 1tsp garlic granules, 2tsp malden sea salt. Mix everything into a paste with approx 3tsp olive oil and then coat the meat with the paste. Leave to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
We loaded our custom-made kebab stand with layers of the marinated lamb but you can always use normal kebab skewers.
We heated the BGE to 300degF indirect and smoked the kebab for 40 minutes over hickory wood smoke until the meat was at least 135degF internal temperature in 3 or 4 places across the kebab and had a smokey bark at the edges of the meat.
I like a yoghurt sauce with my kebab which is made with a small tub of natural yoghurt with a chopped clove of garlic and a pinch of salt stirred in.
Served the whole lot with manky salad (shredded iceberg lettuce, chopped fresh tomatoes and finely sliced white onion), lemon wedges, pickled Basque hot chillis, yoghurt sauce and the chilli sauce of your choice (AW has Marie Sharp's green habanero and nopal cactus sauce* and I had green chilli sriracha*) Mega-epic!
* Marie Sharp's green habanero sauce and Sauce Shop Green Sriracha both available from Amazon UK
