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Incredibly tender lamb casserole in the slow cooker, this might be the most undemanding Easter meal you can cook. There’s more time left to bake cakes…
Melting pieces of lamb in your mouth covered with a rich and delicious sauce with potatoes and carrots, this slow-cooker lamb casserole is comfort food at its best. And so easy to do that you’ll keep doing it, over and over again…
And if you don’t have a clay pot, try this Irish lamb stew with potatoes, the recipe is similar, but it is cooked on the stove.
Lamb casserole in
the slow cooker
We love lamb,
and I try to cook it as often as possible, which is not the easiest task because lamb is not the most popular type of meat in Germany, therefore it is not always easy to get. At least not in the rural region where I live. But every time I get it, I try to make the most of it.
Not only lamb casserole, but also slow cooker shoulder, Romanian lamb stew or roast leg. Not forgetting the smaller dishes such as lamb bone soup, salad or leftover ragout.
Ingredients
of the Lamb recipe
:
- Boneless leg or lamb shoulder, I have used both over the years to make the casserole and never noticed any difference
- If you can only get a piece with the bone (as I sometimes do), cut the flesh from the bone and use the bone to make lamb broth
- You will need approximately 1 kg / 2.2 lbs. If the piece has bone, buy one that weighs about 1.4 kg/3 lbs. A little more or less is perfectly fine.
.
.
Bacon:
- I had already cut
- Bacon rashes are not very suitable; If you can’t get buckets of bacon, buy a whole piece of bacon and cut it into cubes.
bacon into cubes.
Vegetables: potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic
.
Spices
- : Thyme, rosemary, bay leaf, salt, pepper
- Regarding Worcestershire sauce, I’ve noticed that I rarely put it in ingredient photographs; same this time. The reason is that I use it as an afterthought, just something to round off the flavor at the end of the cooking process, it rarely appears in my recipe notes, so I don’t think about it until the end. But I use it a lot.
, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar.
Liquids:
- Dry red wine and lamb broth. If you don’t have lamb broth, chicken or beef broth is fine too.
Other ingredients: oil, flour, tomato paste, cornstarch
.
How to make lamb stew in the slow cooker?
- Cut the meat into cubes of about 3-4 cm / 1.5 inches. Reserve.
- Chop the onions and garlic and set aside in another bowl. Chop the bacon.
- Heat a Dutch oven or other thick-bottomed skillet. Add the bacon. There’s no need for oil, and bacon will produce its fat fairly quickly. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring. (1)
- Add the chopped onions and garlic, stir well and cook for another 3 minutes. (2)
- Add the tomato paste and stir well for 1 minute. (3)
- Pour the wine and deglaze the pan, also scraping the bottom for about 1 minute
- Transfer the contents of the pan to the slow cooker.
.
- Clean the pan with kitchen paper, be careful; it’s hot! Or use another large skillet to fry the meat. Non-stick is also perfect.
- Dry the pieces of meat with kitchen paper. (1)
- Place the meat cubes in a bowl, add some flour and mix well. Flour the meat in batches, just before each batch enters the pan. (2)
- Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in the Dutch oven
- Fry the pieces of meat in 2 or 3 batches until golden brown, about 3-4 minutes per batch, turning the meat several times in the middle and adding more oil between the batches. Do not overfill the pan, or the meat will be stewed instead of burned. (4 above)
- Transfer all meat to the slow cooker.
- Peel the potatoes and carrots. Cut them into larger pieces. I butchered my potatoes (rather medium). Place in the clay pot.
- Add thyme, rosemary, 2-3 bay leaves, salt, pepper and broth.
- The amount of salt you need depends a lot on the broth. My homemade broth isn’t too salty, so I use about 1 heaping teaspoon of fine sea salt.
- The purchased stock is usually much saltier, so you’ll have to be careful there; add less at first. Taste the sauce during the last hour of the cooking time and decide if the sauce needs more salt.
.
- Turn on the machine and cook the lamb casserole for about 6 hours over high heat and about 8 hours over low heat. I prefer to cook it high to save some time; The lamb pieces are still tender melted.
- Once everything is as tender as you want it to be, mix the cornstarch and water to get a thick paste.
- Beat the suspension in the sauce. If the kitchen is high, the sauce will thicken almost instantly. If not, cover the pot again and simmer for about 5-10 more minutes until the sauce thickens.
- Adjust the flavor with salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and vinegar.
The cooking times
of the slow cooker
can be different depending on the machine you have. To be sure, check your pot’s instructions.
Mine needs around 6 hours high for this amazing lamb stew, but I’ve seen recipes that recommend cooking the stew for half that time high. After 3-4 hours, my stew wasn’t even remotely cooked.
Cooking time may
also depend on the meat itself; some cuts may be more difficult than others, and may need more time.
Be sure to check after 4 hours high and 6 hours low; if the meat and potatoes are really tender, that’s it. Simply thicken the sauce and serve. But, as I already said, my stew was half cooked after 3-4 hours.
As
mentioned above, the amount of salt you need depends a lot on the stock you are using. It is preferable to use low-sodium or unsalted broth just to make sure the sauce is not too salty.
If you use regularly purchased broth (which is usually much saltier than homemade), start with just 1/2 teaspoon of fine sea salt. About an hour before the cooking time ends, check the sauce and decide if you need more salt. It will also adjust the flavor at the end of the cooking process.
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