Prep Time
20m
Cooking Time
4-6h
Serves
8
Fuel
Charcoal
Ingredients
Additional Items
Tips:
- Smaller shoulders can take less time to cook, larger shoulders can take longer.
- Ensure your pulled lamb has developed a crusty bark on the outside before wrapping in foil mid-cook.
- Cook without wrapping until the internal temperature reaches 203F. This can take up to 8 hours without wrapping.
- Pull the lamb apart whilst it’s hot.
Method
01.
First of all, you’ll need to ask the butcher for a whole lamb shoulder. You want to buy a lamb shoulder that weighs around two or three kilograms. If you can only get two kilos, that’s going to be fine, but if you want to feed a bigger crowd, or have enough pulled lamb to graze on all weekend, we recommend you get a hearty three kilo slab of lamb shoulder.
Our host Adam likes to leave a light coating of fat on top, but also recommends slicing off some of that harder fat because that’s not going to render as well. You only need a thin membrane to add that extra juicy flavour. Happily, this pulled lamb recipe is super easy to prepare for the smoker.
02.
Next, add a nice layer of peanut oil and then add your rub to all sides and all edges to give us that nice crusty bark on the outside that will maintain that moisture for us. This now goes in the smoker at 220 degrees Fahrenheit (105 degrees Celsius) for a couple of hours
03.
So you’ve left your lamb shoulder on for a couple of hours. It’s got some smoke, its got a nice bark covering on the outside. What you’ll need ot do next to maintain some of that moisture inside is wrap your lamb shoulder in aluminium foil. This is an Australasian Barbecue Alliance power move and one of the secrets to perfectly smoked pulled lamb.
04.
Now that the lamb is wrapped, instead of cooking to time, you need to cook to an internal temperature of about 203 degrees Fahrenheit. How you can gauge the time is by using a digital thermometer and a probe. At this stage, all you need to look at is the gage going up to 203 degrees. Once your lamb hits that temperature, pull it off the grill.
At this stage, you’ve just taken the lamb shoulder off the smoker. It’s been wrapped for the last few hours, preserving that delicious moisture inside that flavoursome crusted outside bark.
