A Lamb Rogan Josh is a classic Indian takeaway order, and now you can cook it in the slow cooker and it's just 450 calories. This Slow Cooker Lamb Curry has quickly become a firm favourite in our house, and even has a portion of veggies in it. Cooked low and slow, it takes very little effort and is bursting with flavour.
Super tender chunks of lamb in a creamy tomato based sauce with a little kick of heat and a generous portion of spinach. This slow cooker lamb rogan josh tastes far more indulgent than it is, and it's a delicious alternative to ordering a curry.
Although the word slow in the title gives it away that it isn't a quick meal in terms of cooking time, it is a quick meal to prepare. This slow cooker lamb curry is the perfect weeknight meal.
If you want some more curry recipes, take a look at our tasty Garlic Chicken Curry, easy Slow Cooker Beef Curry or our super quick Chickpea Curry.
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Ingredients needed
- Lamb - We used lamb fillet and cut it up, but you can buy ready diced lamb from the supermarket.
- Spinach - To add a green boost at the end. You could use kale instead though, or even add some frozen peas.
- Tomatoes - We used a good quality plum tomatoes as these have slightly less metallic taste than chopped tomatoes. If you use cheap tinned tomatoes, they tend to be too watery.
- Shallots - These add a slight sweet taste to the curry - a normal onion will still work fine.
- Garlic and ginger - The base of any curry. You can use the jars of lazy ready crushed garlic and ginger to save yourself some time.
- Greek yogurt - Makes the rogan josh sauce a little creamier and cools it down a bit. You could use single cream if you prefer.
- Stock - We used a vegetable stock, but a beef or chicken stock will also work. Try to use a low salt stock.
- Spice blend - We used a mix of ground coriander, turmeric, cumin, garam masala and chilli powder. You can also add cinnamon and paprika if you wish.
A full ingredients list with measurements is in the recipe card below.
How to make slow cooker rogan josh - Step by step
One: Heat the butter in a pan and then add the lamb. Gently cook for a couple of minutes, until browned.
Two: Put the shallots, garlic and ginger into the pan with the lamb and gently cook for 3 minutes.
Three: Add the spices, stir and cook for one minute.
Four: Add the stock and tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes.
Five: Pour the lamb mixture into the slow cooker, put the lid on and cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours. 10 minutes before it is finished, stir through the spinach and replace the lid. Before serving, stir in the Greek yogurt.
Six: Serve with rice.
It's time that we get those slow cooker out and let them do the work for us. They cook meat like lamb perfectly, as the slow cooking time allows it to get really tender, and it takes on all the flavour of the herbs and spices that you have thrown in there too.
Variations
This is a really simple curry, so you don't want to over complicate it too much. However, you can add some different vegetables if you want to bulk it out a little, and add more nutrients. We like adding some peppers, aubergine (eggplant) and courgette (zucchini) to it, although that is far from traditional.
Instead of adding spinach, you could stir some kale into it.
For some added protein, cooked lentils or chickpeas are a good addition. If you wanted to make the whole meal in the slow cooker, then you can add a drained tin of new potatoes. It saves having to make some rice to go with it.
Serving Suggestions
Some kind of carb is a must to go alongside a slow cooker lamb curry I think. This time we went with rice as it's simple and hard to get wrong. I like to make this yellow rice with curry, which is really easy because it's just rice boiled with turmeric in the water.
It adds some extra flavour, without extra calories, and adds a pop of colour too. You could add some cumin too. We have a slightly more in depth Turmeric Rice recipe too.
You could also serve it with our Cilantro Lime Rice, Perfect Microwave Rice or Oven Cooked Rice.
Why not go double carbs and make some of our Easy Homemade Flatbread that is perfect for mopping up all that delicious rogan josh sauce from the bowl. Make a big batch and they store well in the freezer. You could make our Easy Naan Bread or Peshwari Naan too.
FAQs
As this is a homemade curry, it is a healthier alternative to ordering a takeaway. You can control exactly what goes in it and make sure it is lower in salt. It has a generous portion of spinach and lamb is a great source of iron.
You don't have to, but we really recommend it as it adds such a depth of flavour. It only takes a couple of minutes and it is worth it.
Basically, you want to trigger the Maillard reaction. It is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavour. You don't have to though, and you can just throw everything into the slow cooker and leave it if you are really short on time.
Yes, this curry freezes really well. We regularly batch cook this dish and then portion it out into takeaway type containers to put in the fridge for easy weeknight meals. You can even freeze it with some rice, or just cook that from fresh.
It will keep in the freezer for about 3 months. Alternatively you can keep this in the fridge for 2 days.
Yes, you can swap the yogurt for coconut instead, and it would make this dairy free. It adds some delicious extra flavour that you don't get from the yogurt too, but it does change the nutritional information.
Yes, if you didn't want to make your own spice mix, then you could use a couple of heaped tablespoons of really good quality curry paste. Stir it into the lamb when you are frying it.
Extra tips
• We have added spinach to this dish, however you could use other greens such as kale, cabbage or chard.
• Don't cut the lamb too small, as it will just fall apart and blend into the sauce.
• We used a lamb fillet and cut it into chunks, however you could save time by buying chunks of lamb from the supermarket or butcher. You could even swap the lamb for beef or chicken.
• You can make this a little more indulgent by using single cream rather than the 0% yogurt that we used.
• If you wanted to cut back on some of the meat, you could halve the lamb and then add some mushrooms and red lentils.
• Make sure to cut all the chunks of lamb to the same size (about 4cm cubes) so they cook evenly.
• You could pull the chunks of lamb when cooked, to make kind of a pulled lamb curry, however we like the tender chunks of lamb.
More lamb recipes
If you’ve tried this lamb rogan josh recipe, let us know how you got on in the comments below.
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Recipe
Slow Cooker Lamb Rogan Josh
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon Butter
- 350 g (12.5 oz) Lamb fillet - cut into chunks
- 2 Garlic clove - crushed
- 6 Shallots - diced
- 1 tablespoon Fresh ginger - finely grated
- 1 teaspoon Ground coriander
- 0.5 teaspoon Ground turmeric
- 1 teaspoon Garam masala
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 0.5 teaspoon Chilli powder - (more if you like it spicy)
- 150 ml (0.66 cups) Vegetable stock
- 200 g (1.33 cups) Chopped tomatoes - canned
- 125 g (4 cups) Spinach
- 3 tablespoon 0% Greek yogurt
Instructions
- Heat 1 tablespoon Butter in a pan and then add 350 g Lamb fillet. Gently cook for a couple of minutes, until browned.
- Put 6 Shallots, 2 Garlic clove and 1 tablespoon Fresh ginger into the pan with the lamb and gently cook for 3 minutes.
- Add 1 teaspoon Ground coriander, 0.5 teaspoon Ground turmeric, 1 teaspoon Garam masala, 1 teaspoon ground cumin and 0.5 teaspoon Chilli powder Stir and cook for one minute.
- Add 150 ml Vegetable stock and 200 g Chopped tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes.
- Pour the lamb mixture into the slow cooker, put the lid on and cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours. 10 minutes before it is finished, stir through 125 g Spinach and replace the lid. Before serving, stir in 3 tablespoon 0% Greek yogurt.
- Serve with rice.
Recipe Tips
- We have added spinach to this dish, however you could use other greens such as kale, cabbage or chard.
- Don't cut the lamb too small, as it will just fall apart and blend into the sauce.
- We used a lamb fillet and cut it into chunks, however you could save time by buying chunks of lamb from the supermarket or butcher. You could even swap the lamb for beef or chicken.
- You can make this a little more indulgent by using single cream rather than the 0% yogurt that we used.
- If you wanted to cut back on some of the meat, you could halve the lamb and then add some mushrooms and red lentils.
- Make sure to cut all the chunks of lamb to the same size (about 4cm cubes) so they cook evenly.
- You could pull the chunks of lamb when cooked, to make kind of a pulled lamb curry, however we like the tender chunks of lamb.
Nutritional Information
The nutritional information provided is approximate and is calculated using online tools. Information can vary depending on various factors, but we have endeavoured to be as accurate as possible.
As all appliances vary, cooking times are a guide. Please note that by changing the serving size, the cooking time may also need to be altered.
Rookie Curry says
I made this for the first time yesterday (and also my first Indian recipe). I doubled the recipe, 8 hour cook time in a Kitchenaide slow cooker on low.
Overall, quite tasty. I did find it lacking in flavor/zip compared to local Indian restaurants. I added a tsp of cayenne pepper as I knew the chili powder wasn't going to be enough, although I only can find "mild" American chili powder here in the US. Next batch I will consider some ground red pepper to see if I can get it a bit hotter.
I'm also going to back off on the vegetable stock. Even with 1 Tbsp. of corn starch added at the beginning, I found it a bit too thin. The imperial/US measures make chopped tomatoes a bit awkward, and I probably got too much added liquid from using the closest matching canned tomato size (28 vs. ~22 oz in the recipe). Probably drain the tomatoes more and only use 1 cup vegetable stock.
My only other question is the shallots -- what does this work out to in terms of volume of diced shallots? Literally doubling the recipe would have been 12 shallots, and the shallots here are big. I used 9 and wound up with 2.5 cups of diced shallots, which seemed too much, although not a problem in the finished dish.
Dannii says
Thanks for your feedback. This won't have the same flavour as an Indian restaurant, due to not using ghee or a lot of oil. That's where all the flavour (and calories comes from usually).
Yes, US chilli powder and UK chilli powder are very different. Ours is pretty spicy, so cayenne was a good addition.
The type of canned tomatoes make a huge difference to the amount of liquid that is left too, as some canned tomatoes are quite liquidy to begin with.
Yes, that is a lot of shallots. Our shallots here in the UK are pretty small - 6 shallots would be the same as a medium sized onion.
Rookie Curry says
Do you know what chillis are used in UK chili powder? I might try a substitution, as I suspect US chilli powder is mostly a "Mexican" flavor ingredient and not meant for adding heat. The shallots might not have been that off then, two medium size onion wouldn't be far off the ~2 cups shallots I ended up using. They were large by even our shallot standards, but these days I'm taking what I find at the grocery. In a restaurant (or I'd guess traditional) recipe, does the Ghee replace the yogurt at the end or is it just added?
Gaz says
Try some fresh green chillies to ad heat maybe 4 or 5 just top and tail them.
Ghee is a clarified butter and is used for frying instead of oil or butter.
Rob says
Didn’t have a slow cooker so did 500ml of stock at 140C for 5 hours with half a shoulder of lamb. Absolutely lovely.
Dannii says
So glad you enjoyed it :)
Jacqueline Debono says
Lamb is my favourite meat for curry! I Love it. I've never made it in a slow cooker though. Yours looks so good! Def want to try it!
Phil Dixie says
The first curry that I had was a Lamb Rogan Josh at Smileys in Baker Street, London about 45 years ago which I thought was brill, but this one puts it to shame. Absolutely brilliant.
Lauren Vavala | Delicious Little Bites says
I've never heard of this dish before, although I just recently started ordering take out from a local Indian restaurant. My fiance loves lamb and curry and would be thrilled if I made this for him!
Bintu | Recipes From A Pantry says
I definitely need to give this a try in the slow cooker - it looks so delicious and full of flavour!
Cliona Keane says
Ooooo, I can practically taste this through the screen! It looks like it has so much flavour!
Lisa Huff says
Love that you can make this in a slow cooker. I can almost smell it! I bet it smells amazing with all those spices and flavors.