Mechoui (Slow-Roasted Cumin & Butter Lamb)

Name: Mechoui (Slow-Roasted Cumin & Butter Lamb)
Total time: 4 h 20 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Moroccan
Ingredients: 1.8 kg Lamb shoulder, bone in; 80 g Butter or smen; 6 Garlic cloves; 2 tbsp (14 g) Ground cumin; 1 tbsp (7 g) Sweet paprika; 1 tsp Ground coriander; 30 ml Olive oil; 2 tsp Flaky salt; 250 ml Water

Lamb shoulder painted with a garlic-cumin butter and roasted low for hours until it pulls apart in your fingers, served with nothing but cumin and salt to dip.

Fonte

Ricetta di Moroccan home kitchens · 🏺 Tradizionale · Moroccan household cooking

Maghrebi feast cooking — Méchoui is a whole sheep or lamb spit-roasted in Maghrebi cuisine; the word comes from the Arabic šawā, 'to grill or roast'. It is a feast dish of North Africa, in Morocco and Algeria referring to a whole animal roasted slowly until meltingly tender and eaten with cumin and salt. There is no single author; this is festival cooking passed down rather than a written recipe.

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Passaggi

Mash the softened butter with the garlic, 1 tbsp of the cumin, the paprika, ground coriander, 2 tsp salt and the oil into a thick paste.
Pat the lamb dry and rub the paste all over, pushing it into any slashes in the meat. Let it sit 30 minutes, or overnight in the fridge.
Heat the oven to 150°C. Sit the lamb on a rack over a tray, pour the water into the tray, and cover the whole thing tightly with foil.
💡 The water and the foil turn the oven into a gentle steam-roast. That is what keeps a four-hour roast from drying to string.
Roast covered for 3 hours, then remove the foil and roast 45–60 minutes more, basting with the tray juices, until deeply browned.
It is done when a fork twisted in the thickest part meets no resistance and the meat wants to fall from the bone.
💡 Mechoui is not carved into neat slices — it is meant to shred. If it still resists the fork, it simply needs longer; there is no overcooking a low, moist roast like this.
Rest 15 minutes. Serve pulled into chunks with small bowls of the cumin-salt for dipping and khobz alongside.

💡 Consigli

Traditionally mechoui is a whole lamb spit-roasted over embers for a feast, turned slowly for hours. A shoulder in a low home oven gives you the same falling-apart texture and cumin-scented crust without a pit in the ground.
The dipping salt is not an afterthought. In Morocco mechoui is eaten by hand, each piece dabbed into a mix of ground cumin and salt — that final seasoning at the table is part of the ritual.