Smoked Spanish Lamb with Butterbeans & Chickpeas

It's the final episode for the season of the Love Logs Winter BBQ , and this one's an absolute BANGER!

This is a variation of a recipe I've made a few times but I've never cooked the lamb on the BBQ before, and I was genuinely blown away by the difference a bit of subtle smoke made... as I was serving it to Heather I told her it was the best thing I'd made in months!

Yet again this is a super simple dish with almost no time at all spent outside by the BBQ.. although with the weather starting to turn we'll be getting back to full-blown outdoor cooking very soon!

Right, let's go...

30 minutes total active prep & cooking time, 10 minutes spent outside

3 hours on the BBQ, 2-3 hours in the oven

1. Use a tablespoon of quality sea salt per kilo of meat to dry brine the lamb, ideally the night before if you can. Make sure to slash into the flesh with a sharp knife to allow the salt and spice rub to penetrate.
2. Make up the spice rub and apply to the lamb, using 1-2 tablespoons rapeseed oil as a binder. Make sure to cram the rub into the slashes you made before dry brining!
3. Smoke the lamb indirect at around 150°C for 3 hours. I used cherry smoke because it's nice and subtle and I don't like heavy smoke with lamb, but apple would work too.
4. Start preparing the ingredients for the butterbean stew with 20 minutes left of smoking the lamb - you only need to roughly chop the onions and peppers.
5. Add the onions, peppers, tomatoes, butterbeans and chickpeas into a roasting tray and mix through, take the tops off the garlic bulbs and nestle them between the other ingredients in the tray. Add 500ml chicken stock and season liberally with salt.
6. Pull the lamb off the BBQ and add it to the roasting tray, then seal the whole tray tightly with foil.
7. Add to a preheated oven at 180°C and continue to cook for 1.5 to 3 hours - you want the lamb to hit 95°C internal temperature but more importantly, to be probe-tender. It's quite hard to overcook this dish, so don't worry too much if it spends longer in the oven - too long is much better than not long enough.
8. Once probe-tender, pull the roasting tray out of the oven and give the lamb a 10 minute rest on a board, returning the stew to the oven uncovered... in the video I put the lamb back in with the stew because I lost my mind while filming, but it's worth a quick rest so the lamb's a little easier to pull apart.
9. Prep your bread and any other sides, we like it with the crusty bread toasted because the texture really works, but it also works with fresh crusty bread and butter.
10. Ladle out a good helping of the stew, heap up loads of that gorgeous lamb and add a few hunks of bread, and tuck in!