Enjoy this delicious Lamb Potjiekos Recipe made with Karoo Lamb and Mint. One of the benefits of living out in the small Karoo town of Tarkastad is the quality of meat we get from our local butchery. Today we are cooking Karoo Lamb Potjiekos with Mint.
If you haven’t cooked a potjie before, I really encourage you to try. It’s really easy to make and anyone can get it right. We love mint with lamb, and this just added to the flavours of this delicious potjiekos meal.
The steps in a potjiekos recipe are easy to follow, but feel free to try different combinations of ingredients. At the end of the day it is a stew, but there’s something about cooking it in a hot cast iron (Dutch) pot that makes it taste better.
Our typical steps for a Lamb Potjiekos Recipe are:
1) Make sure you have sufficient coals for the duration of the cooking time. I wouldn’t cook potjiekos for less than an hour and a half. A minimum of two and a half hours is what we normally aim for. Three to four hours is even better, but don’t burn it, and check that the liquids don’t run dry.
2) Get all your ingredients prepped and ready. Don’t cut the vegetables into small pieces, unless you like a mushy potjie. It tastes good either way. Cut them into decent size chunks. We also normally put either red or white wine in our potjie, it cooks the alcohol out, and adds to the flavour. We couldn’t get any wine for this video due to covid lockdown restrictions.
3) Get the pot nice and hot with some olive oil in it.
4) I like to brown the meat first and then put in the onions, but you can do it either way. We do the onions first in this one. This step helps to caramelize the meat, and gives it better flavour. It’s perfectly legal to stir the ingredients at this point – before the veggies are in?. In this recipe we are using Karoo Lamb.
5) We always add garlic (don’t be shy) – you can never have too much of it. Stir the onions, garlic and meat together, until the meat is nicely browned. Not more than 5 minutes.
6) Add the mushrooms, potato and sweet potato next, followed by the carrots. Keep adding the rest of the vegetables as in the video, but don’t stir the pot anymore. You can spread out the ingredients as you pour them in, but try not to stir. We added beans, celery, chopped tomatoes and fresh garden mint.
7) Add a few tablespoons of tomato paste, salt, pepper or any other herbs you want.
8) We always add some liquid – either a brown onion soup or stock mix. Again – it depends on your preference. If the pot loses a lot of the liquid through the steam, you can top it up with more stock, water or soup during the cooking time. You may need to lower the temperature and remove some coals if it is too hot.
9) Put the lid back on and let it simmer away for another hour and a half to two hours. Check on it every now and then to make sure it hasn’t dried out.
That’s it. Serve on rice or lekker Roosterkoek (braai bread) and enjoy with friends and family. What makes a potjie such a highlight, is that it is very social. You get to sit and chat while the potjiekos is cooking away. Also see our Chicken Potjie Video where we put bread in the pot with the potjie.
Enjoy!! ?
