Jamaican Lamb Curry - Slow Cooker Recipe

Jamaican lamb curry is boneless leg of lamb, marinated in Jamaican curry powder and then given six hours in the slow cooker until it falls apart. It goes in with coconut milk, new potatoes, carrot and okra, so it comes out as a whole dinner rather than something needing sides.

The curry powder is mixed from scratch rather than tipped out of a jar. Six whole spices go into a dry pan first, coriander, cumin, allspice, fenugreek, mustard seed and peppercorns, and once they are toasted and ground you stir in turmeric, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. The allspice is what makes it taste Jamaican rather than Indian, and the toasting is what makes it taste of anything at all.

The heat comes from one whole scotch bonnet, which goes in unbroken and comes out at the end. Left whole it gives you its perfume and very little of its fire, so you can leave it in longer, or split it, depending on who is eating. If you are building a curry night, my Paneer Korma makes a good vegetarian partner.

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Why You’ll Love This Curry

• Lamb instead of goat, and nobody minds. Curry goat is the original, but goat is genuinely hard to buy in Britain unless you have a Caribbean butcher nearby. Lamb is the substitution Jamaican cooks themselves reach for, and in every reader thread I went through, not one person objected to it.
• The slow cooker is the point, not a shortcut. “Can I do this in a slow cooker?” is the most-asked question on every curry goat recipe online, and most of them are not slow cooker recipes at all. This one is written for it from the start.
• Coconut milk is built in. On other recipes readers keep asking whether they can add it. Here it is already the body of the gravy, which is what makes it rich rather than just hot.

What Goes Into Jamaican Curry Powder

Jamaican curry powder is built on turmeric, which is a third of the blend by volume and is where the colour comes from. Around it go coriander and cumin, allspice, fenugreek, mustard seed and black pepper, with ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves stirred in at the end.

The first six go into a dry pan whole and are toasted for two or three minutes until they smell fragrant and the mustard seeds start to pop, then ground. Do not let them darken much past golden, because burnt spice turns the whole blend bitter and there is no way back from it. Made this way it keeps three to six months in a jar with the lid on tight, though it is at its best in the first few weeks.

Jerk Seasoning and Curry Powder Are Not the Same Thing

Jerk seasoning is the other pillar of Jamaican cooking and it is a different thing entirely. It is built on allspice, which Jamaicans call pimento, with Scotch bonnet, thyme, spring onion and garlic, and it is usually a wet rub rather than a dry powder.

There is no turmeric in jerk at all, which is the quickest way to tell them apart: curry powder is yellow, jerk is dark green or brown. This recipe uses curry powder. The Scotch bonnet and thyme it shares with jerk go into the pot whole rather than as a rub.

A Closer Look at the Ingredients

• Boneless leg of lamb 1.8 kg, cut into big chunks. Leg holds together over a long cook and carves up neatly. Shoulder works too and is a little fattier, which some people prefer. Lamb neck is excellent if you can get it, and readers who used it said it reminded them of oxtail.
• Jamaican curry powder Eleven spices you mix yourself, six of them toasted whole and then ground. It is not a stand-in for the shop-bought jar, it is the real thing, and it tastes of a great deal more. Allspice is the one that makes it Jamaican rather than generically curried, so do not leave it out.
• Coconut milk 700 ml, full fat. It is the body of the gravy, not a garnish, and it is what keeps the heat comfortable.
• Vegetable stock Only 300 ml. That looks mean against the coconut milk, and it is deliberate: a slow cooker barely evaporates, so liquid that goes in stays in.
• Scotch bonnet One, left whole. Whole gives you the fruity aroma and gentle warmth. Pierce it once for more, slice it for real heat, or leave it out and pass hot sauce at the table.
• New potatoes 500 g, waxy, in large chunks. They thicken the gravy as they release starch, which is half of why this recipe does not need much liquid. Cut them small and they turn to mush over eight hours.
• Okra 150 g, going in for the last hour only. Not traditional in a Jamaican curry, and I know it: okra belongs more to Trinidad. I like what it does here, and an hour is enough for it to soften without collapsing.
• Lemon Half in the marinade, half at the end. The finishing squeeze is what stops eight hours of coconut and spice tasting heavy.

Equipment You’ll Need

If you are reading this in America, a Crock-Pot is the same appliance. The brand name stuck and became the word, so anything below that says slow cooker means your crockpot.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Goat or mutton instead of lamb The original, and worth it if you can get it. Both are leaner and stronger tasting than lamb, and both need longer: go for the full eight hours on low and check rather than trusting the clock.
• Shop-bought Jamaican curry powder Use about 5 tbsp in place of the homemade blend. Betapac is the one most people name, with Chief and Blue Mountain close behind. Any Caribbean grocer will have them, and they are all over the internet.
• Ordinary English curry powder Works, and I would rather tell you that than have you skip the recipe. It will taste less Jamaican, so add an extra teaspoon of ground allspice to bring it closer.
• Beef or chicken stock Either is fine in place of vegetable. Chicken is the most common choice in Jamaican kitchens.
• Sweet potato, yam or butter beans All work in place of the new potatoes. Sweet potato and yam break down more, so cut them larger still.
• No Scotch bonnet A habanero is the closest relative. A red chilli is milder and misses the fruity note, so add a strip of orange peel with it.
• Chicken thighs Same method, but drop to about 4 hours on low. Any longer and they fall apart into the gravy.

How to Make Jamaican Lamb Curry, Step by Step

Full quantities are in the recipe card below. It is a slow cooker recipe, but the half hour of work before the lid goes on is what decides how it tastes.

1. Make the curry powder first. Put the coriander, cumin, allspice, fenugreek, mustard seeds and peppercorns into a dry frying pan over a medium heat, with no oil, and shake the pan for two to three minutes. You are waiting for two signals: they start to smell like spice rather than dust, and the mustard seeds begin to pop against the pan. Take them off at golden. Past that they go bitter, and a bitter blend cannot be rescued, so it is worth standing over. Tip them onto a cold plate so they stop cooking in the pan heat, let them cool, then grind them in a spice grinder or a pestle and mortar. Stir in the turmeric, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, which are already ground and would only scorch. That makes exactly the five tablespoons this recipe needs, so double it if you want a jar for next time.
2. Marinate the lamb. Mix the diced lamb with half the curry powder, the juice of half a lemon and two tablespoons of oil, so every piece is coated. The oil is doing real work here: most of what you can smell in that blend is fat-soluble, so the oil carries it onto the meat and holds it there. Cover it and leave it in the fridge, at least two hours and overnight if you can. Do not expect the marinade to reach the middle of the cubes, because it will not: it seasons the outside, and the six hours in the pot is what flavours the rest.
3. Brown the lamb in batches. Frying pan over a medium-high heat, two to three minutes a side, and do not crowd it. This is the step people skip because the machine does the rest, and it is the one that decides whether the curry tastes deep or flat.
4. Wake the spices up in the pan. Turn the heat down, add the rest of the curry powder to the fat left behind and stir it for a minute or two until it darkens and smells fragrant. Keep it moving and keep the heat low, because ground spice in hot fat goes from fragrant to burnt in seconds and you are working over a pan that has just seared meat. This is a second and different job from the dry toasting: in fat the aromas of the separate spices react together and stop tasting like a list of spices. Scrape the lot into the slow cooker, including the browned bits stuck to the pan, which is where a good deal of the flavour is.
5. Vegetables in, and the Scotch bonnet whole. Onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and half the thyme on top of the lamb. Use a waxy potato and not a floury one, because a floury potato will have dissolved into the gravy long before the eight hours are up, and half the thyme is held back so there is something fresh to finish with. Put the Scotch bonnet in whole and do not cut it. Left intact it gives you the fruity perfume and a gentle warmth rather than fierce heat; pierce it once with the tip of a knife if you want more, or slice it if you want the curry genuinely hot. The chilli’s heat sits in the pale pith the seeds are attached to, sealed inside a thin skin that has to split before much of it can escape. Left whole, most of it stays sealed in for the whole six to eight hours; pierce it and a little gets out; slice it open and it all goes straight into the sauce. If you want somewhere between whole and sliced, half a chilli does that without you having to fish seeds out of a whole one.
6. Add the liquid. Coconut milk and stock. It will look like less liquid than you expect, and that is on purpose: a slow cooker does not evaporate, so anything you add now is still there in eight hours.
7. Cook it low and slow. Six to eight hours on low, or three to four on high, with the lid on throughout. Low is better, and not only because it is gentler: the connective tissue in shoulder and leg needs time rather than temperature to soften, and cooking it hotter makes the muscle squeeze out its moisture before that has happened. Tough meat is the commonest complaint with this dish and the answer is always more time. Resist lifting the lid to look, because a slow cooker loses a good deal of heat every time you do and it takes twenty minutes or so to get it back.
8. Okra in for the last hour. Stir it through gently about an hour before the end. It only needs that long, and okra left in from the start will have gone to threads and thickened the gravy in a way most people do not want. Stirring it about is what draws out the mucilage, so move it as little as you can get away with.
9. Lift out the Scotch bonnet, then season. Take the pepper out and discard it. Now salt to taste, and only now, because nothing has boiled away and what tasted right at the start would be too much by the end. The rest of the lemon juice goes in here too, which lifts a rich coconut gravy that has been sitting for eight hours, and the reserved thyme. If it is looser than you want, take the lid off and turn it to high for the last half hour, which is the better fix because it concentrates the flavour as well as the texture; a tablespoon of cornflour slaked in cold water thickens it without doing either.
10. Serve. Over rice and peas, with fried plantain if you have it. Like most curries it deepens and mellows overnight, so if you can cook it a day ahead it will very often taste better than one served straight from the pot.

Recipe Card for Jamaican Lamb Curry

Recipe Card

Jamaican Lamb Curry - Slow Cooker Recipe

Jamaican curry made with lamb instead of goat, which is far easier to buy in Britain and every bit as good. The slow cooker does the work: six to eight hours until the lamb gives way completely, in a coconut gravy with potatoes, okra and a whole Scotch bonnet.

★★★★★ 5 from 5 votes · Rate this recipe

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Prep

35 min

Cook

6 hrs

Marination time

2 hrs

Total

8 hrs 35 min

Serves

7

Per serving

711 kcal

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7 servings

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Equipment I Use

Slow CookerHybrid Non Stick Frying PanLarge Mixing BowlMortar and Pestle

Ingredients

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1.8 kg Small Leg of Lamb, boneless, trimmed from fat and cut into portion chunks 5 tbsp Jamaican Curry Powder, recipe below 300 ml Vegetable Stock 700 ml Coconut Milk 2 Onions, medium size, diced 500 g New Potatoes, cut into quarters, waxy type 2 Carrots, medium size, peeled and diced 150 g Okra, sliced 2 Tomatoes, large dice 1 handful Fresh Thyme 1 Lemon, juice only 1 Scotch Bonnet Chilli, whole, adjust to your preference 4 tbsp Vegetable Oil, For searing the meat

Ingredients for Jamaican Curry Powder:

2 tsp Coriander seeds, whole, for toasting 2 tsp Cumin seeds, whole, for toasting 1½ tsp Allspice berries, whole, for toasting 1 tsp Fenugreek seeds, whole, for toasting 1 tsp Yellow mustard seeds, whole, for toasting ½ tsp Black peppercorns, whole, for toasting 5 tsp Ground turmeric 1 tsp Ground Ginger ½ tsp Ground Nutmeg ¼ tsp Ground Cinnamon ¼ tsp Ground Cloves ½ tsp Cayenne Pepper, optional, the whole Scotch bonnet already brings the heat

Instructions

Tap a step to tick it off as you cook.

1

Make the curry powder

Make the curry powder. Toast the coriander, cumin, allspice, fenugreek, mustard seeds and peppercorns in a dry pan over a medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, shaking the pan, until they smell fragrant and the mustard seeds start to pop. Do not let them darken much past golden, because burnt spice turns the whole blend bitter and there is no fixing it. Tip them out to cool, grind to a powder, then stir in the turmeric, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. This makes the 5 tablespoons the recipe needs.

2

Marinate the Lamb

In a large bowl, mix the diced lamb with the half of curry seasoning blend, juice of half a lemon, and 2 tablespoon of vegetable oil. Ensure each piece is well-coated. Let it marinate for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight in the refrigerator.

3

Brown the Lamb

In a frying pan, heat the vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Add the marinated lamb pieces in batches, ensuring not to overcrowd the pan. Brown each side for about 2-3 minutes. Remove and transfer to slow cooker.

4

Wake Up the Spices

Turn the heat down to medium and add the remaining curry seasoning to the same pan, with a little more oil if it looks dry. Stir it for a minute or two until it darkens slightly and smells fragrant, then scrape the whole lot into the slow cooker. Cooking the spice in hot fat is what takes the raw, dusty edge off it, and it is the difference between a curry that smells good and one that tastes it.

5

Add Vegetables

Place the onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and half the chopped thyme into the slow cooker on top of the lamb. Add the Scotch bonnet whole, without cutting it. Left intact it gives you the fruity aroma and a gentle warmth; pierce it once with a knife for more heat, or slice it if you want the curry genuinely hot.

6

Pour Liquids

Add the vegetable stock and coconut milk to the slow cooker, ensuring the ingredients are mostly submerged (If not, add more vegetable stock)

7

Slow Cook

For Low Setting: Cover and set the slow cooker to low. Cook for 6-8 hours until the lamb is tender and the flavours meld together.

For High Setting: Cover and set the slow cooker to high. Cook for 3-4 hours until the lamb is tender and the flavours meld together.

8

Add Okra

About 1 hour before the curry is done, add the sliced okra chunks to the slow cooker and stir gently.

9

Season and Serve

Once the lamb is tender, lift out the Scotch bonnet and discard it. Season with salt, drizzle with the remaining lemon juice and garnish with fresh thyme. If the gravy is thinner than you want, take the lid off and cook on high for the last 30 to 45 minutes, or stir in 1 tbsp cornflour slaked in 2 tbsp cold water.

10

Serve

Enjoy your Slow Cooker Jamaican Lamb Curry with rice and peas.

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Chef’s notes＋

Adjust to your preference: Adjust the amount of curry powder and Scotch bonnet chilli according to your heat preference. Always be cautious when handling Scotch bonnet chillies as they are very spicy. Use gloves if possible and wash your hands thoroughly after handling.

Nutrition per serving＋

711 kcalProtein 59.2 gCarbs 26.9 gFat 41.9 gSat fat 23.9 gFibre 4.7 gSugar 5.3 gSodium 270 mgServing 534 g

Jamaican Lamb Curry - Slow Cooker Recipe · https://chefsbinge.com/jamaican-lamb-curry-slow-cooker-recipe/

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Variations

• Curry goat, properly Swap in bone-in goat and give it the full eight hours. The bones are worth the trouble, as they give the gravy a body lamb cannot quite match.
• On the hob Brown everything in a heavy pot, then simmer covered on the lowest heat for about two and a half hours, topping up with a splash of water if it tightens. You will get more evaporation, so it thickens on its own.
• In a pressure cooker Sear on the saute setting, then 35 to 40 minutes at high pressure with a natural release. Quick, and genuinely good, if not quite as deep.
• Milder, for a family Leave the Scotch bonnet out altogether and put a bowl of it chopped on the table for whoever wants it. That way one pot feeds everybody.
• With butter beans Stir a drained tin in for the last half hour. Common across the Caribbean and it stretches the pot a long way.

Storing, Freezing and Reheating

• In the fridge Cool it, get it covered and refrigerated within two hours, and eat it within three days. It genuinely improves on day two as the spice settles into the lamb.
• In the freezer Up to three months. Freeze it in the gravy. The potatoes soften a little on thawing, which nobody has ever complained about in a curry.
• Reheating Gently on the hob until it is bubbling right through, with a splash of water or stock if it has tightened. A microwave works for a single portion, but stir it halfway.
• Do not freeze it in the slow cooker pot The ceramic does not like the temperature swing, and a cracked insert is an expensive way to learn that.

What to Serve With Jamaican Lamb Curry

🍽 This is made for a big mound of rice and peas, which soaks up all that rich, spiced gravy. I like fried sweet plantain alongside, and a piece of hard dough bread or festival to mop the plate clean. A little steamed cabbage or a simple crisp salad rounds it out and cuts nicely through the warmth.

FAQ for Jamaican Lamb Curry

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A Few Words from the Chef

I’m sure you’ll savour every bite of this Jamaican Lamb Curry recipe! Did you add your own special touch or variation to it? Maybe you paired it with a particular side dish or garnish? I’d love to hear about your culinary adventure with this Caribbean delight. If it delighted your taste buds, don’t forget to leave a star rating! Enjoy your meal!