Lamb Rogan Josh Curry

It's the weekend and I've cooked up a huge batch of lamb curry. I start the curry on the stove top and finish it in a low oven for several hours using a Le Creuset cast iron casserole pot. That way you can walk away and not worry about it burning at the bottom, plus a lack of frequent stirring means it doesn't end up a shredded meat mush. I'm sure this recipe would work really well in a slow cooker too.

A large amount of my curry is destined for the freezer, which is why I don't add extra vegetables. If you choose to make a smaller version, with no intention of freezing it, I'd recommend adding some vegetables such as potatoes in the last hour of cooking or in the final 15 minutes add some beans, broccoli and cauliflower.

I often cook stews and curry's using chump lamb chops, they stew really well, have a strong flavour and are, you know, cheap. I prefer the leg chops, which my butcher calls "target chops" because the have a little round bone in the center. They are really meaty, not as fatty as the shoulder chops and plus have all that marrow goodness! I don't cut them up, instead I take a more osso bucco approach - if you cook them long enough the meat will all fall apart anyway.

The base for the curry is Mangal rogan josh curry powder, if this troubles you, have a read of my Dahl recipe for my justification for not making it entirely from scratch.

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees

Lamb Rogan Josh

20 green cardamon pods

10 whole cloves

2 cinnamon sticks
4 tbl Mangal brand rogan josh curry powder
1 tbl coriander seeds

1 tbl cumin seeds

3 onions diced

2.5 cm knob of ginger diced

3 cloves purple garlic diced

2 kg of leg/sirloin lamb chops

2 tins tomatoes

dry roast the cumin and coriander seeds then grind in mortar and pestle

Brown all chops in a pan with a little oil. Be careful not to over crowd the pan, I used two to speed up the process

while you are browning the chops, dice the onion, garlic and ginger

Set the browned chops aside, add a little more oil and onions to the casserole dish. Even with the extra oil, the base of my casserole dish was pretty dry at this point and the browned meat bits were sticking and at risk of starting to burn. I didn't want to waste the brown meaty goodness in the extra fry pan either, so I added about 1/4 cup of water to the fry pan and scraped up the good stuff, then pored that water into the casserole dish and did the same again.

fry onions for about 2 minutes, then add garlic, ginger, cardamon, cinnamon and cloves until the onions are translucent

add the remaining spices (cumin, coriander & mangal curry powder) fry for another couple of minutes. Then add two tins of tomatoes. I don't like it to have too much tomato so I make up the rest of the liquid with water - about 800 ml

Allow it to heat up to a gentle simmer, then layer in the chops, gently pushing them down as you go. Again wait for it to start simmering then transfer it into a 150 degree oven.

I cooked mine for 4 hours, which is long I know but I think it is totally worth it, the meat was falling apart and the flavours well developed. If your oven is reliable, you could just check on it every hour, or even less, it only needs to have the chops pushed down every now and then. My oven is not reliable, so I checked every 1/2 an hour for the first 2 hours, then after I was convinced the temperature was steady I left it for the next two and it came out like this...

I stirred it a bit take out the cinnamon sticks and had a moderate attempt at removing the cardamon pods and pulled out the odd stringy bit of fat. A little bit of gentle stirring broke up the meat perfectly - and now I'm swimming in lamb curry! I also tasted it to check if it needed salt or a tsp of sugar - sometimes the tomato flavour is too acidic and needs some sugar to balance, but this time it was fine without.

I served it with dahl, diced capsicum, cucumber, coriander, greek yogurt, papadums and brown rice. i know I should have taken a photo... blogger regret, a lesson learned for next time!