Moroccan Lamb Tagine Recipe

I’m always looking to try new recipes and have been on a Moroccan kick recently. Early in the morning and off I go googling around to look for some neat recipes to try and I found Rouxbe, which is an online cooking school with great tips on cooking techniques as well as some interesting video recipes (step by step video instructions, which is definitely a neat idea), the one that caught my eye was the Moroccan Lamb Tagine recipe. Seriously, Moroccan? Lamb? You can’t go wrong!

There were a few things that I substituted and changed around but overall I followed the recipe pretty closely (I usually tend to do that the first time around so that when I do tinker around with the recipe I know how it should taste), see the comments below any ingredients that were altered or changed.
Ingredients (which occurs in several steps):
Meat Marinade
3 lb diced lamb shoulder (or you can buy those bags of precut lamb at Superstore)
1 tbsp ras el hanout – Moroccan spice blend (you can find the make it yourself recipe here)
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp fennel seeds
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp Kosher salt (you can use regular salt if you don’t have any, just remember that regular salt is saltier than Kosher salt)
3 medium onions (I found this to be a little much, so I only used 2 onions instead)

Cooking the Meat
4 tbsp olive oil (I used a little less since the lamb I bought was a bit fattier)
4 large crushed garlic cloves
1 tsp Kosher salt (refer to above comment)
¼ tsp ground black pepper
¼ tsp dried ground ginger
½ tsp ground cardamom seeds
1 tsp ground turmeric powder
1 tsp dried chilli powder (I substituted this with chilli flakes)
1 small cinnamon stick
4 pieces dried orange peel (they also mentioned that you can use fresh, which is what I did)
3 cups chicken stock

Roasting the Squash
1 butternut squash
2 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp Kosher salt
¼ tsp pepper

Finishing the Tagine
1 large onion
2 carrots
1 cup prunes (for the life of me I couldn’t find any, but you can all breathe easy to find out that the tagine was just as tasty without them)

Preparation:

Remove the fat from the lamb and the silver skin if you’re using lamb shoulder, which makes the lamb chewy and will prevent it from becoming fully tender. Dice the lamb in to 1 inch cubes and put into a large bowl, add all the spices. Grate the onions using a food processor, or by hand, then add to the meat and mix thoroughly. Cover and place in refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight if possible.

Prehead the oven to 375º Fahrenheit. (I recommend a lower temperature, closer to 300º Fahrenheit, this ensures that when the meat cooks it will be more tender and juicy).

Sear the lamb in batches over medium high heat in a Dutch oven (or a relatively big pot that can be placed in the oven). You may have to do this in 2 or 3 batches. Once all the meat has been browned, crush and add the garlic, salt, pepper, ginger, cardamom, turmeric, chilli powder, cinnamon stick and the dried orange peels. Then put the lamb back in the pot and add in the chicken stock until it covers all the meat and bring to a boil.

Cover the pot (you can use tin foil if necessary) and place in to the oven. Check it about 45 minutes and stir, stew for another 45 minutes until the meat is quite tender. The meat should pull apart easily when it is done. While the meat is cooking in the oven, move on to the squash.


Peel, de-seed and chop the squash into approximately 1 inch cubes. Toss with oil, salt and pepper then bake on a parchment lined baking sheet for about 15 mins, or until a fork goes in easily.


Once the lamb is ready, dice the onions, carrots and prunes and fold in to the tagine. Bake, covered in the oven for another 20-30 minutes until the carrots are fully cooked (you can also cook it on the stove top to reduce the water content in the stew, resulting in a thicker sauce). Fold in the roasted squash and serve with Moroccan couscous.

This dish is possibly even tastier served the next day, giving all the flavors some time to blend together!