South African · Main

Lam Potjiekos

Intermediate
30 min
roughly 3 of 4 for cost

rich · charred · umami-deep · aromatic Leads with richness that coats and comforts, char used as punctuation, opening aromatic and staying there.

Ingredients

1.5 kg lamb neck and shank on the bone, in thick pieces
45 ml sunflower oil
300 g onions, thickly sliced
6 garlic cloves, bruised
250 ml dry red wine
200 ml water
30 g tomato paste
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs thyme
1 tsp cracked black peppercorns
12 g salt
500 g baby potatoes, left whole
400 g carrots, in thumb lengths
400 g butternut, in large chunks
200 g green beans, topped

Equipment

Grill

The skills inside

Braising Grilling over live coals Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake

Allergen screen

Found: alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Set the three legged pot over a bed of coals and brown the lamb in the oil in batches until every face is properly dark; crowding steams it, so give each piece room, then lift it all out.
Soften the onions and garlic in the same fat until slack and browning at the edges, return the meat, and add wine, water, tomato paste, bay, thyme, pepper and half the salt.
Lid on, rake the coals down to a low glow you can hold a hand over for six seconds, and braise untouched until the neck meat gives when pushed with a spoon, about 2 hours; the lid should mutter, never rattle. 120 min
Now layer, and do not stir: potatoes straight onto the meat, then carrots, then butternut, then the green beans on top. Lid back on.
Cook until a skewer slides through the butternut without resistance and the beans are tender but still dark green, 45 to 60 minutes, then lift the pot off, tilt it and spoon gravy from the bottom over the top; serve in layers rather than mixed. 60 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Braising 39 recipes

The pieces went into the liquid already deep brown on their faces, and the pot floor gave up its fond to that liquid rather than keeping it.
The liquid comes partway up the pieces and stays there for the whole cook (not submerged, not run dry), and it never boils: the surface trembles and no more.
It went long enough for the collagen to convert: a fork twists in it with almost no resistance, and the piece still lifts out whole rather than falling into shreds.
The liquid has become a sauce: it has body, it coats the back of a spoon, and it tastes concentrated rather than thin and washed out.
The meat is moist and seasoned through to its centre, not dry fibres sitting inside a good sauce.

Where it goes wrong The oven or the burner ran too hot and the liquid boiled, so the fibres tightened and squeezed their moisture out: it shreds dry into a thin greasy liquid, and more time makes it worse rather than better.

Grilling over live coals 77 recipes

The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.

Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.

At the Table

The Pour: Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
Also Right: Malbec
From the Taps: Porter
Zero-Proof: Pomegranate spritz

Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Lam Potjiekos Technique: BraisingThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the South African kitchen