My seven hour lamb recipe probably gets the most search hits of anything I’ve ever posted in my entire blogging career. I am hoping this surpasses it as it.is.so.worthy.
I have based this on Ajoy Joshi’s recipe in his book Indian home cooking but it detours in terms of cooking time and the lamb cut I used. (I can’t say it enough – if you’re in Sydney and if you love Indian, get thee to Ajoy’s restaurant Nilgiri’s.)
The pic below doesn’t really truly reflect the depth of the colour of the dish – washed out by my appalling photography skills I suspect.
Seven hour lamb roganjosh
Adapted from Ajoy Joshi, Indian Home Cooking
- 6 lamb shanks
- 2 cups whole milk plain yoghurt
- 1 tsp salt
- 2/3 cup of vegetable oil and butter melted together
- cinnamon stick
- 20 green cardamom pods
- 5 brown or black cardamom pods
- 1tsp whole cloves
- 1kg brown onions, chopped
- 2tbsp finely grated ginger
- 2tbsp crushed garlic
- 4tsp chilli powder, or to taste
- 2tsp ground tumeric
- 1/3 cup freshly chopped coriander
- 1 1/2 tsp garam marsala
- Preheat oven to 120-150C (just depends on your own oven – I did it at 120 in a fan forced crappy oven, if you have a decent oven that maintains its temperature adjust accordingly)
- In a large bowl combine the lamb with the yoghurt and 1/2 tsp of salt
- In a large casserole dish that can go from stovetop to oven* heat the oil and butter mixture over medium heat and add the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds
- Add onions and 1/2 tsp salt and cook over medium-low heat, uncovered, for about 20 minutes until the onion is deeply golden but not burnt
- Add the ginger and garlic and cook, stirring for 30 seconds or so
- Drain away any excess oil and butter, leaving the spices and onions in the pan (I don’t know if I did something wrong but I didn’t get any excess)
- Add the lamb and yoghurt mixture, chilli powder and tumeric to the pan and mix well.
- Cover tightly and transfer to the oven and cook for seven hours
- Remove from the oven and shred the meat off the bones into the accumulated sauce**
- Just before serving stir through the coriander and garam masala and check its seasoning.
* I still don’t own one of these so did it all in a large heavy based saucepan and then transferred it to a baking dish, which I covered tightly with foil
** In hindsight I think this would make a fabulous dinner whereby each person is served a shank, some of the sauce and basmati rice – you could easily add another two shanks to this recipe for the amount of sauce it generates.