This Noboborsho, make the classic! You will love this easiest, tastiest Bengali Mutton Korma recipe. The tender, juicy mutton pieces infused with everyday spices and flavouring ingredients you use in your daily cooking!
What is Korma?
Korma means braising meat! First, fry the marinated meat and then stew it slowly in a closed cooking pot until tender. Korma is not for your everyday mid-week meals. Earlier, people used to make it for parties!
What is required to make a good Korma?
Onion paste, ginger and garlic paste, curd are the main ingredients in Korma. Other than that, some recipes call for blanched nuts as a thickening agent and the richness!
Also, love, passion, and patience are the key ingredients to make a great Korma! The secret to making a good Korma is the amount of time you invest in roasting Masala. In Indian cooking, Masala means not only the spices but also the other flavouring agents. Koshano in Bengali or Bhuna in Hindi means slow roasting, which is the trick to make a great Korma. If you do this step too little, the dish will look pale, yellowish! If you do too much, you will burn the Masala, and it will taste bitter.
Types of equipment required
- Mixing bowl-
- Spatula
- Mixer grinder
- Dutch oven– If you live in India, try to invest in a heavy-duty Kadrai, and if you live out of India, I can’t stress enough to invest in a good quality dutch oven. It will serve a lot of cooking purposes: braising, slow cooking, stewing.
I am not a big fan of cooking meat in a pressure cooker! But if you think that it will save gas or energy, then over medium to medium-low heat, fry the meat for about 20 mins, then transfer it to a pressure cooker. Over high heat, wait for one whistle, then cook over low heat for about 20 to 30 minutes.
The significance of this recipe
There are so many ways to make Korma. Every Indian region has its regional influence on the Korma recipe. I adapted this Mutton Korma recipe from a bengali cookbook Rannar Boi by Leela Majumdar & Kamala Chattopadhyay. Instead of Garam masala powder, adding roasted cumin powder at the end is the game changer! If you carefully dry roast the cumin, then you will experience the magic!
Enjoy with Pulao or Paratha.
Mutton Korma
Equipment
Ingredients
- 600 gm Mutton
- ½ cup Yogurt - or 125 gm
- 15 gm Ginger - or 1 tbsp Ginger paste
- 30 gm Garlic - or 2 tbsp Garlic paste
- 225 gm Onion - or 1 cup Onion paste
- 1 tsp Turmeric powder
- 1 tsp Red chilli powder
- 1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
- ¼ cup Mustard oil - or 60 ml
- 2 cups Boiling water
Whole spices-
- 2 small Bay Leaves
- 3 Green Cardamoms
- 2 Cloves
- 6 cm Cinnamon Bark
- 1 tbsp Cumin seeds - Roasted and then grounded
Instructions
Make paste-
- Put the Ginger, Garlic, Onion into a grinder and make a paste.
Marinade Mutton
- In a mixing bowl put mutton pieces and add in onion paste, ginger paste, garlic paste, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, curd, and salt to taste.
- Mix everything well, cover with a lid and let it marinate at least for one hour on the kitchen counter or overnight in the refrigerator.
Dry roast cumin seeds
- Heat a small frying pan over medium heat.
- Add whole cumin seeds and over low heat keep roasting. It will take 2-3 minutes.
- When you start to get the roasted flavour, remove it from heat and keep stirring for a few seconds, then transfer the roasted cumin seeds into a grinder.
- Grind the roasted cumin seed when it’s cooled.
Cooking
- Heat oil in a heavy-duty cooking pot. Add whole spices and stir for a few seconds.
- Then, add marinated meat, over a high heat cook for 2-3 minutes.
- When you see the moisture and liquid stat bubbling up, reduce the heat to medium.
- Cover with a lid, and continue cooking for 20 minutes.
- Remove the lid and give a stir, reduce the heat to low and continue cooking.
- When you see the gravy has reduced, keep adding a dash of boiling water to stop sticking to the inner bottom of the pan.
- Once the mutton is fully cooked, add one cup of boiling water, Increase the heat to high.
- When the gravy starts boiling, reduce the heat to low and sprinkle roasted cumin powder.
- Give a quick stir and turn off the heat.
- Give 10 to 15 minutes of resting time before serve.
Recipe Video
Recipe Notes
Roast the meat for 20 minutes, then put it in a pressure cooker, add one cup of boiling water. Over high heat cook for one whistle, then reduce the heat to low and cook for at least 20 minutes. Let the pressure release by itself, remove the lid, sprinkle roasted cumin powder and cover with the lid again.
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