Fancy an easy peasy roast lamb dinner that’s ready in under an hour and only uses one pan? Then you have to try this delicious Herb Crusted Lamb Mini Roast Traybake – perfect for Easter lunch, Sunday lunch or even midweek!
Over the last few months, I have been working closely with the ‘LAMB. Tasty Easy Fun’ campaign as one of their Lambassadors, sharing my love of lamb, showing how easy peasy lamb is to cook with and, of course, creating lots of delicious lamb recipes!
One cut the ‘LAMB. Tasty Easy Fun’ campaign are really keen to promote is the lamb mini roast. A lamb mini roast is simply a smaller joint of lamb of around 400-600g, designed to feed 2-3 people (those with small children in the house may be able to stretch a bigger one to 4) – it’s perfect for quick and easy midweek cooking or for feeding smaller families for Sunday lunch or even on Easter Day!
The beauty of the mini roast is it cooks so quickly – preheat your oven to 190C (gas mark 5) and allow about 6 minutes per 100g for medium, and 8 minutes per 100g if you prefer your meat well done. That means for a 500g lamb mini roast cooked to medium, that’s just 30 minutes in the oven!
For best results get your lamb mini roast out of the fridge about 15 minutes before cooking and rest for about 15 minutes afterwards – and that’s the whole thing done, from fridge to table, in under an hour…meaning you can enjoy a roast lamb dinner even on busy weeknights!
To make my mini roast even more delicious I have created a very simple herb crust, using just 5 ingredients: thyme, rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper – a simple marinade which gives this lamb mini roast a wonderful Mediterranean flavour.
The other great thing about cooking a lamb mini roast is that there is plenty of room around the lamb to add potatoes and other vegetables – turning this easy roast lamb into a fully-fledged traybake where everything cooks in one roasting tray. I have added new potatoes, which you can roast without parboiling, baby carrots and red onions. Not only does this neat little trick cut down on the washing up and means you avoid juggling pans on the hob, but the veggies are also beautifully flavoured with all the delicious lamb juices!
This Herb Crusted Lamb Mini Roast Traybake would be a great choice for smaller families at Easter, but it’s also a great way of enjoying roast lamb the rest of the year too – it is so easy peasy to do, and takes less than an hour in the oven – perfect for when you really want a roast lamb dinner midweek!
If you want to make this quick and simple traybake into more of a feast, add a jug of gravy and some extra veggies (peas, cabbage, broccoli…) and you have yourself a very easy but totally delicious roast lamb dinner!
- 1 lamb mini roast (approx. 500g)
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped rosemary
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped thyme
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- 300g new potatoes, cut in half or quartered depending on size
- 200g baby carrots (e.g. Chantenay)
- 2 small red onions, cut into wedges
- 8 cloves garlic in their skins, gently bashed
- A few sprigs of rosemary and thyme
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- A jug of gravy
- Green vegetables, e.g. peas, cabbage, broccoli
- Remove the lamb from the fridge.
- Preheat your oven to 190C/170C fan/gas mark 5.
- Put the potatoes, carrots and onion wedges in a roasting tray. Leave the garlic cloves in their skins, but gently bash them with the side of a knife to split the skins (this allows them to add flavour without burning) and add to the tray.
- Drizzle over 2 tablespoons of olive oil and add some salt and pepper and a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme. Toss everything together, then rearrange so the vegetables are evenly spaced in one layer.
- Put the vegetables in the preheated oven and cook for 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, mix together the lamb marinade ingredients: chopped rosemary and thyme, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper and rub the paste all over the lamb.
- Remove the vegetables from the oven and make a space in the middle. Place the lamb in the space. Cook the lamb and vegetables for 30 minutes (see note).
- After 30 minutes remove the lamb from the tray and place on a board.
- Spread the vegetables out again, tossing them gently in the juices. Put the vegetables back in the oven and cook for a further 10-15 minutes until a lovely golden colour (the vegetables will have had a total of 1 hour).
- Cover the lamb loosely with foil and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
- When the vegetables are cooked and the lamb is well rested, serve with a jug of gravy and extra vegetables, if you wish.
This is a collaborative post with the ‘LAMB. Tasty Easy Fun’ campaign. ‘LAMB. Tasty Easy Fun’ is an EU funded campaign which aims to increase the use of lamb in everyday cooking. Lamb is often considered difficult to cook, expensive, or something to be saved for Sunday roasts. The aim of the campaign is to demonstrate just how tasty, easy and fun lamb is to cook with every day of the week! They also have a wonderful website, full of tasty and easy lamb recipes that go way beyond the traditional roast lamb we all know and love.
For more information on the lamb mini roast and all the different cuts of lamb, check out this brilliant guide to lamb cuts on the ‘LAMB. Tasty Easy Fun’ website.
Need advice on how to buy and cook lamb for Easter? Check out these fab tips from an experienced butcher…
Love Lamb? Check out my collection of Easy & Delicious Lamb Recipes
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I am linking this up to Brilliant Blog Posts, Cook Blog Share, Free From Fridays, Recipe of the Week and Cook Once Eat Twice.
Another delicious looking traybake Eb – I love the look of all those gorgeous veggies you’ve used as well especially those lovely little carrots x
Aw, thanks Mandy – the carrots are fab, aren’t they? My kids love them especially! Eb x
Such a great recipe, perfect for Easter Sunday. 🙂 x
Thanks Julie – yes it would be great for Easter Sunday, but so quick and easy to do, it can even be done midweek!! 🙂 Eb x
Looks delicious, will have to try this one x
#BrillBlogPosts
Thanks Helen – it’s sooo good! Hope you like it!! Eb x
Roast lamb is one of my favourites, I love your quick, easy version x
Thanks Charlotte, it really is so quick and easy!! 😀 Eb x
Brilliant looks really tasty
One thing that I love about Easter is the excuse to cook a good leg of lamb! This looks and sounds like the perfect Easter lamb dinner! Sorry for the late comment and I hope you have a good week. Thank you for sharing with #CookBlogShare x
I always associate traybakes with Easy Peasy Foodie. If I ever need traybake inspiration, this is the place to come!
This one looks so good….. But then I am always a sucker for lamb….. xx
Aw, thanks Kate 🙂 I do love a good traybake – so easy peasy!! Love it when the oven does all the work for me 😀 Eb x
Noone else in my house will eat lamb so I never make it but this looks lovely and I love rosemary. #freefromfridays
Aw, shame! I am lucky all of my family love lamb, so we have it quite often 😀 Wish I could send you some of this virtually!! Eb x
This looks lovely and is so easy to make! I have to admit that I always add spices to lamb as that’s the way I started to like it a few years ago but maybe I should try it with herbs sometime. Thank you so much for sharing with #CookOnceEatTwice and sorry it’s taken me so long to come and comment. I’ve got no free time because of the Easter holidays so I’m getting quite behind on everything this month!
Thanks Corina – I love spices with lamb, especially Middle Eastern ones…I was toying with doing a spice crusted lamb mini roast, but I did something similar for Easter on the blog last year…a slow roasted Ras el Hanout lamb…so I thought I’d do something different this year 🙂 Eb x
P.S. Don’t worry about being ‘late’…honestly, tell me about it I am late for everything at the moment…so much work to do (and that I want to do!), so little time…I’m always impressed normally at how quickly you comment!!