A succulent ground lamb with Moroccan spices

I love finding ground meat on sale. It makes for such quick and easy meals. It doesn’t matter whether the meat is chicken, beef, lamb or turkey, if it’s on sale it’s gonna end up in my kitchen. When you find it, buy enough to cook for two meals.

You know: cook once, eat twice. What a lovely mantra: “Cook once, eat twice.”

The key to this strategy is having plenty of ways to use the meat. Even if it’s always the same meat, say chicken, you will never hear your family complain when you vary the seasonings enough. Au contraire!

Here is one of those variations. We enjoy it with ground lamb. Grass fed beef would work beautifully as well with the seasonings tempering the slight gaminess of the meat and the vegetables and stock providing needed moisture. It’s a win!

For the first meal we ate the this dish with brown rice pilaf (the pilaf was a planned leftover). What a quick and satisfying meal that is! In the second meal, this succulent Moroccan ground lamb played a starring role in a lamb salad with tahini dressing. Another win!

If you make enough of the lamb mixture for a third meal, consider piling it in warmed pitas with garbanzo beans, radishes, green onion, avocado, and tahini dressing.

Just a little lamb left over? Add it to a frittata or a cheesy quesadilla that includes some feta. The possibilities are endless. What fun!

Preparation Note: Have all the chopping done and the ingredients assembled when you start this dish. It comes together very quickly. If you have your own personal sous chef, disregard this note. 🙂

Moroccan Ground Lamb Ingredients

• 2 pounds ground lamb (or grass fed beef)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil or coconut oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 medium onions, minced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 inch piece of ginger root, minced
• 3 tablespoon ground coriander
• 1 1/2 tablespoons tomato powder
• 2 cinnamon sicks
• 1/3 cups raisins
• 1/2 cup toasted almonds
• 1 cup chicken or beef broth, approximately

Moroccan Ground Lamb Steps

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in your largest well-seasoned skillet. When you cook once to eat twice you need large pots and pans!
2. Crumble the lamb into the hot oil. Sprinkle on the salt and pepper. Start with 2 teaspoons of each. You can add more later if you wish.
3. Cook until the lamb has lost most of its pink color, stirring frequently. Ten minutes will probably do it. Leave the pan on the stove top but turn off the heat. If you have an electric range, remove the pan from the burner.
4. Sprinkle on the tomato powder and tuck in the two cinnamon sticks. You should have a little moisture left in the bottom of the pan. Push the cinnamon sticks into the moisture to begin releasing flavor. Add the raisins so they can begin to plump.
5. While the lamb is cooking, heat the second tablespoon in another large skillet. Sauté the onion until transparent then add the garlic, ginger and ground coriander. Sauté for another 3-4 minutes until the mixture is very fragrant. You will have two skillets going. Watch them closely!
6. Add the finished onion mixture to the lamb and gently stir to combine all the flavors.
7. Pour in enough broth to make about 1/2 inch of liquid in the bottom of the skillet. Turn the heat to simmer. This is where your meat absorbs some of the luscious flavor!
8. Simmer for about 10 minutes watching that the skillet does not dry out. Add more broth if needed. Your lamb mixture should be juicy, but not runny.
9. Adjust the salt and pepper, then serve with pride!