Slow roasted lamb with garam masala

This is a recipe adapted from Karen Martini where she used similar ingredients for the marinade and then slow cooked it, covered in a conventional oven.  As anyone with a combi steamer knows, slow baked lamb is even better with the added moisture a combi can provide see here.  Karen’s recipe was good but had too much yoghurt for a combi slow cook.  There is no need to cover the dish so the marinade needs to be intensified and baked with less liquid as the steam will add to the moisture in the pan.  I have reduced the yoghurt to only enough to marinate and the results were excellent.  Melt in the mouth lamb that fell off the bone with those delicious Indian spices that had seeped into the meat overnight.

A lovely change from the traditional garlic and rosemary that I used before.  Serve it with the meat juices, some Red cumin lentils, tomato and onion salad and some thick yoghurt with a little garlic and grated cucumber.  Yum 🙂

Ingredients:  Serves 4-6

1 x 2kg lamb shoulder or leg (shoulder is better)
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
knob of ginger, grated
1½ tbsp. garam masala
2 tsp ground cardamon
1 lemon juice and rind grated finely
2 tbsp. Greek yoghurt
1 tbsp. sea salt

Method:

1. Mix all the marinade ingredients together, including the salt.
2. Trim the lamb of any large pieces of fat that you can remove easily and ‘spear’ the meat all over with a sharp knife at random intervals so that the marinade may permeate into the meat.
3. Rub all over the with marinade and place it into a plastic bag, tie it up and place it on a plate in the refrigerator overnight.  You should use all the marinade and it should just be enough to cover the lamb thickly without any excess.
4. Remove from the fridge 1 hour before baking.
5. Make sure your fan cover is installed on the back of the combi if you have one, place the lamb into the solid steamer tray and bake on Combination mode @ 120°C + 80% moisture for 4 hours.
6. Remove from the solid tray and place onto a large, warmed serving platter.  Remove the bone if using a shoulder.
7. Strain the juices into a jug and remove the fat.

There is no need to rest the lamb when cooking like this.  The bone should just fall out of the meat if you use a shoulder and be meltingly tender.  I used a leg this time around so after the meat was carved I poured over the meat juices before serving.

Enjoy.