Indian · Main
Rogan Josh
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, aromatics blooming from the first bite, on a slow, honest burn.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg lamb shoulder on the bone, in 4 cm pieces
- 120 ml mustard oil, food grade (kachi ghani). Not the mustard oil sold for massage and marked for external use only
- 1 g asafoetida
- 4 cloves
- 4 green cardamom pods
- 2 black cardamom pods
- 1 short cinnamon stick
- 2 bay leaves
- 30 g Kashmiri chilli powder; this quantity assumes true Kashmiri, mild and mostly pigment, so taste yours and start at 15 g if it bites
- 10 g ground fennel
- 8 g ground dry ginger (sonth)
- 200 g full-fat yoghurt, whisked smooth
- 10 g fine salt
- 3 g garam masala
- 5 g dried cockscomb flowers (mawal), steeped in 60 ml hot water, for colour
- 400 ml water
The skills inside
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · mustard
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
- Heat the mustard oil until it stops smelling raw and the first smoke rises, then let it cool a little; unheated mustard oil is harsh and this is the only way to soften it.
- Drop in the asafoetida, cloves, both cardamoms, cinnamon and bay, and the moment they swell add the lamb, browning it in the spiced oil until the pieces are coloured all over and the fat around them runs clear and smells of the spices.
- Pull the pan off the heat, stir the Kashmiri chilli, fennel and dry ginger into the fat for 20 seconds so they bloom without catching and the fat turns red, then whisk in the yoghurt a spoonful at a time.
- Add the water and salt, cover, and hold at a bare simmer for about 1 hour 30 minutes, until the meat is soft and a slick of red oil has risen and stayed. 60 min
- Strain in the mawal water, stir through the garam masala and simmer uncovered for 5 minutes. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes
- The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
- It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
- The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
- Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
- The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.
Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Sweet lassi
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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