Think of beautiful cuts of lamb, fresh vegetables, and aromatic spices filling the kitchen! With chunks of lamb and creamy coconut milk, this is a hearty yet exotic dish that makes all your senses sit up and take notice. A quick preparation time is an extra bonus.
Many people shy away from preparing Indian food. They believe it is much too difficult or tedious to make.
Surprisingly, it is very easy and fun to create.
Many of the ingredients that you will need are found in any regular home kitchen, and all of them are available at your local supermarket.
Traditionally, this recipe would include two lamb shanks along with cubed lamb steaks. The lamb shanks would be boiled for several hours to produce a stock.
However, lamb is not the most common meat available in most groceries in the US, and who has time for making their own stock out of larger bones?
So, I’ve substituted chicken stock in this recipe. And I used two 1 1/4-pound packages of lamb “stew meat.” I’ve also made a similar stew from lamb “country ribs” and deboned and cubed them.
Regardless, you’ll need about 2 1/2 pounds of cubed lamb from any part of the creature.
If you would like to further indulge the creative process, then take a look at our tips for creating your own curry powder.
Vegetarian? Our spicy eggplant curry is perfect! And for an autumnal twist, check out our pumpkin curry recipe.
The Recipe
| Servings | Prep Time |
| 6 people | 15 minutes |
| Cook Time |
| 45 minutes |
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Think of beautiful cuts of lamb, fresh vegetables, aromatic spices filling the kitchen - an exotic dish that will make your senses sit up and take notice.
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- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 1/2 pounds lamb steaks cubed
- Salt and Pepper (to taste)
- 1 large onion chopped
- 2 tablespoons minced garlic
- 1 tablespoon minced ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
- 1 tablespoon curry powder yellow (to taste)
- 2 cans coconut milk
- 2 cups low-sodium chicken stock
- 2 large carrots sliced into rounds
- 1 cup green beans fresh or frozen
- 1 cup green peas fresh or frozen
- 2 russet potatoes peeled and diced
- cucumber cut into spears (optional)
- tomatoes sliced (optional)
- Naan or pita bread (optional)
- Jasmine or basmati rice cooked (optional)
- In a large pot or cast iron skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add lamb cubes. Sprinkle with salt and black pepper. Cook until brown on all sides, about 10 minutes.
- Add onions and sauté until tender, about 4 minutes. Stir in garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin, cayenne, and curry powder.
- Slowly add the coconut milk and chicken stock. Stir in the carrots, beans, peas, and potatoes.
- Add more salt, pepper, and curry to taste. Reduce heat. Cover and simmer for approximately 30 minutes or until veggies and meat are tender, stirring periodically.
- Serve with fresh cucumber spears, naan, and jasmine or basmati rice.
Nutritional Information*
Cooking by the Numbers…
Step 1 – Prep
Gather up and measure your ingredients and prepare your mise en place.
Tip: you could buy ginger root and grate it using a microplane or box grater, but grated ginger is also available in jars at Asian grocery stores. If you’re in the habit of cooking with fresh ginger, this may be a product you want to keep on hand.
Step 2 – Browning, Sauteing, and Spicing
Brown your lamb chunks.
After 10 minutes or so, add the onions and saute until they are translucent. Add the garlic and ginger, stir, and continue to cook until aromatic, about 30 seconds.
Add the remainder of the spices except the salt.
STEP 3 – Add the Veggies and the Liquids
Add the coconut milk and chicken stock.
A note on the stock: if using store bought, I like to use the low sodium variety and hold my additional salt additions until nearing the end of the recipe. Commercial stock varies in salt content (even the low sodium varieties). You can always add more but not easily take it away once it has been over salted.
Add the potatoes, carrots, and other veggies and simmer for around 30 minutes. Season to taste.
Serve with rice and some fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and naan or homemade pita bread.
Love lamb and curry? Then try our Moroccan lamb, veggie, and lentil stew, our ode to lamb’s delicious place in Moroccan cookery.
And don’t forget to check out all of our soup and stew recipes to help take the chill off a fall or winter’s day!
For more recipes inspired by Indian cuisine, you’ll love the following:
Don’t forget to Pin It!
Photos by Mike Quinn, © Ask the Experts, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. See our TOS for more details. Originally published February 10th, 2015 by Lynne Jaques. Completely revised and updated December 1st, 2017, by Mike Quinn.
*Nutritional information derived from a database of known generic and branded foods and ingredients and was not compiled by a registered dietitian or submitted for lab testing. It should be viewed as an approximation.
About Mike Quinn
Mike Quinn spent 20 years in the US Army and traveled extensively all over the world. As part of his military service, Mike sampled coffee and tea from all virtually every geographic region, from the beans from the plantation of an El Salvadorian Army Colonel to "Chi" in Iraq to Turkish Coffee in the Turkish Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. He spent nearly a decade in the Republic of Korea where he was exposed to all forms of traditional teas. Mike formerly owned and operated Cup And Brew, an online espresso and coffee equipment retail operation.
Wow, this curry looks delicious. I was considering making my own coconut milk after reading Ashley’s article and seeing this recipe gices me an excuse to try it out!
This hits the spot! I love making Indian food at home, but have never made lamb before. Actually, I don’t even order it at restaurants. Maybe I need to give it more of a chance.
Who would have guessed that it’s actually quite easy preparing Indian. This meal sounds like something great to surprise your friends with if they’ve never tried it. Looking at the ingredients it seems that all of them would be very easy to find at any supermarket, which makes this meal even more appealing.
I have never eaten lamb before. I know that my mama has stories of her uncle slaughtering them for food. She recalls a dish her mother use to prepare using lamb meat. I wood have to replace it with another form of meat. That being said the dish does look very good, and simple as well.
You definitely make it sound so easy, especially since I have most of those ingredients at home anyway. This sounds so delicious and warming, especially for the cold nights we’ve been having recently. Thanks so much for sharing this recipe!
Can I offer a confession? 99% of the time I never use recipes when I cook! Normally I have a taste in my head anf figure out how I want it by the taste bud method. Owning/writing for Foodal blog has actually forced me to slow down and write everything out – especially various ethnic dishes that may be more common in the west .
I literally just tried this recipe after reading this. I didn’t have any lamb so I just used beef instead, it was still really really yummy, especially in the cold winter like right now. To add on your coconut milk obsession, may I suggest putting a dash into the water when you cook rice? It gives the rice this slight coconut-y flavor that’s sooo good.
This seems to be a delicious recipe. When I was making my dietary transition to becoming vegan, I had a short season where I ate lamb. I enjoyed the taste and texture.
Now I can see how to substitute sietan, which will absorb all the wonderful flavors of this dish. I like the sauteing and simmering. It seems to assure a delicious flavor. Especially with the ginger and coconut milk in there. Those nice green vegetables give it a nice nutritional balance too. This is a keeper.
Here’s a tip to anyone at university/college. Make this curry, then have a look for any spare veggies you have around, and throw them in too. They’ll absorb all of the flavour and you waste less, have more to eat and save money!
Chopstick, excellent advise. Thanks for the input!
Oh, this looks absolutely amazing. I usually get lamb everytime I go to an Indian restaurant (since at home, I make the chicken or vegetarian recipes, since it’s much cheaper!). And it is quite true that making Indian food is easy! Usually, I wipe up a curry chicken or butter chicken (without a recipe, just using what we have). But even if I don’t use recipes at normal, it’s cool to look at yours — for some reason, I would not have thought of adding peas or beans (I’m more a tomato/potato curry gal) nor would I have gotten coconut milk!
You made me pretty hungry there, by the way. I wish we had those cuts of lambs around here. Hmmm. Lamb.
I regularly make curries and have around 150 recipes, but i don’t tend to make lamb curries very often. They are quite easy to make, i do occasionally whip up a really hot, spicy rogan josh as i like it that way.
I will try your recipe tomorrow evening as it has re awakened my interest in lamb curries. Looking at your other dishes on here it’s amazing that you don’t use recipes when cooking. I could never do it that way, i’m just not creative enough.
While i thought its an daunting task making this specific dish, the recipe and its directions prove me wrong and instead make me drool…i have no choice but to bookmark this page 🙂 and schedule an Indian lamb curry making/cooking day…i can already imagine the awesome smell wafting off my window, oh, my neighbors are in for a rude surprise 😀
I usually tend to shy away from complicated recipes in case it taste bad and I end up wasting a lot of ingredients. This lamb does look tempting to make though.
I love this, and it looks delicious! Dishes that we typically thinks of as being complicated are in reality so easy to make. And they are so easy to adapt to any meat or other ingredients that we already have on hand. I like to look at recipes and then adapt them to my specifications via taste and experimentation. I love using them as a blueprint, then using whatever I may have on hand. I like to think of it as I’m conducting my own chopped competition in my kitchen where I’m always the winner, since I’m always the only contestant. Lol!
Thank you for this post! I find that if you look at a different culture you’ll find many different combinations of food. It’s interesting to see lamb used in Indian food as well. This is one recipe that I will definitely try soon
I really like everything about this dish, except that it contains lamb! Can it be switched with chicken?
As much as tasty this looks, I just dislike the thought of eating lamb, I avoid most of meat (can’t afford to go vegan, so I do what I can).
Thanks in advance for the reply!
You can’t afford lentils ? ????♂️
I think lentils would make a delicious and affordable vegan alternative!
This looks so amazing. I love lamb meat (and have heard that it’s leaner and healthier, too!). I’ve never tried making curry before at home; without fail I get it at every Asian cuisine place I go to because I feel like that is the only time I’ll get to eat it! Nothing like a delicious, spicy hot curry. Bookmark.
I just found the perfect meal for Valentine’s day! My partner loves curry. He’s addicted to Indian delicacies. I found this site and I thought it would be nice to explore a little more and see what I could find. Luckily I found this wonderful recipe. I hope I can cook this. To be honest I never tried to cook Indian food before, but there’s always a first time for everything. By analyzing the recipe I see that’s not complicated to make, it seems to be quite simple. I will practice one or two days before and use my best friend as a guinea pig. I’m sure he’ll marry me on the spot after taste this wonderful curry! I’ll bookmark and save.
This really does look delicious, like a meal that you would get in a restaurant. I love Indian food and it is something we eat regularly. I will certainly try your recipe.
This sounds really tempting. I’ll have a hard time finding the meat for this in my area, but I’m going to try. This is just mouth-watering.
I really think my husband would enjoy this a lot. I’m going to make my own curry powder as well. Thanks for this recipe and for the link to that.
Oh this is gold Lynne!
I was meaning to look up a guide on this but just never got round to it, I guess I’m pretty lazy when it comes to research.
I like the table you did, and I especially like that it’s only 5 steps, I’m not one for tedious work, especially when it comes to cooking, I’m dreadful haha!
Might be a bit hot having a curry in the summer, but why not eh? I love curry and I love summer 🙂
Thank you!
My sister made this before and it tasted so good.
I always wondered what ingredients are in the sauce because it is a mixture of so many spices.
Next time I have some lamb meat at home I will try to cook it myself.
I love this recipe. I just had this the other day when we were invited for dinner at my friend’s house.
And I have all the spices for it at home. All I need is to get the lamb meat and then could start making it myself.
I used lamb broth that I made with a lamb head & this recipe was super DELICIOUS!!!! I doubled the spices. I will be making this a regular this winter!!!