For company

Pull-apart Greek lamb

John Torode’s slow-cooked Greek lamb — a whole shoulder studded with garlic and anchovy, cooked low over whole tomatoes, carrots and herbs until it falls apart. Served in big shredded chunks with tzatziki, a no-cook chickpea salad and flatbreads for mopping up the juices.

About 30 min prep + 4–5 hours in the ovenServes 8–10 (estimated)

The lamb shoulder comes from Epsom Downs butchery in Bryanston. Make the tzatziki and the chickpea salad a day ahead and keep them in the fridge — they only get better for it.

A rustic bowl of tzatziki with grated cucumber, mint and olive oil

The tzatziki

A bowl of no-cook chickpea salad with herbs, red onion, tomato and harissa

The no-cook chickpea salad

Method

01
Heat the oven to 140°C fan and sit a shelf as low as possible.
02
Pierce the lamb all over with a small knife, then fill each slit with a garlic clove and half an anchovy fillet.
03
Rub the lamb all over with the oil, then season.
04
Heat a flameproof casserole dish and sear the lamb all over until well browned.
05
Take off the heat, remove the lamb from the dish and tip in the tomatoes, carrots, sage and rosemary. Sit the lamb on top and scatter over the thyme.
06
Cover the dish, slip it onto the bottom shelf of the oven and cook for 4–5 hours, until it is pull-apart tender.
07
Carefully lift the lamb from the dish, discard the herbs and roughly squash the tomatoes into the juices. Sit the lamb back in the dish and serve in big shredded chunks with the tzatziki, chickpea salad and flatbreads for mopping up the juices.
08
For the tzatziki: mix everything together in a small bowl with a pinch of salt. It can be made a day ahead.
09
For the no-cook chickpea salad: mix all of the ingredients together, mashing a little so that the chickpeas are a bit rough. Make it a day ahead and keep it in the fridge.

In the glass

A Greek red — Xinomavro or Agiorgitiko

This lamb is rich, garlicky and deeply savoury, so it wants a red with acidity and backbone rather than heavy fruit. Xinomavro — literally “acid-black” — or Agiorgitiko from Greece bring both, with bright cherry and tomato-leaf notes that speak the same language as the roasted tomatoes in the pot. If you would rather pour white, an Assyrtiko from Santorini has the zip to stand up to the garlic and the tzatziki.

Meet the chef — John Torode

Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1965, John Torode learned to cook from his grandmother in New South Wales — he was sent to live with her after his mother died when he was four, and the dishes she made — roast chicken, gravy, pancakes — still anchor his cooking today. He started in restaurant kitchens at 16, trained at catering college, and moved to the UK in the 1990s, where he cooked for Terence Conran’s restaurant group and met Gregg Wallace along the way. When MasterChef was revamped on BBC One in 2005, John became its judge, a role he held for twenty series alongside Celebrity MasterChef. He ran London restaurants including Smiths of Smithfield and Luxe, has written cookbooks including Sydney to Seoul and My Kind of Food, and was appointed MBE in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to food and charity. A slow-cooked shoulder of lamb studded with garlic and anchovy is exactly the kind of honest, generous food he is known for.

Meet the butcher — Country Meat, Epsom Downs

The butchery in the Epsom Downs Shopping Centre on William Nicol Drive is Country Meat, and it is phenomenal for a reason. The business began in 2012, when the Serfontein family of the Sernick Group combined farming, butchery and direct supply — farmed their own cattle outside Kroonstad, loaded them onto their own trucks and delivered to their own butcheries, true farm-to-butcher status. In 2016 they launched South Africa's first certified Bonsmara beef brand with complete traceability from the Edenville farm near Kroonstad to the plate, the year Nick Serfontein was named Free State Farmer of the Year. Today Country Meat works with whole carcasses, processed in-house at their Lonehill facility under HACCP-certified food-safety protocols, with an unbroken cold chain and the standards professional kitchens insist on — and their butcheries have earned a Gold Cleaver Award, South Africa's seal of approval for a butchery. Butchery done right, from their block to your table. And a 2 kg shoulder of lamb, treated with that kind of care, is exactly why this Greek lamb falls apart at the whisper of a fork.

Keep cooking

For company

Pull-apart Greek lamb

Method

A Greek red — Xinomavro or Agiorgitiko

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