Leftover Lamb Curry with Mushrooms

Using up cooked meat and vegetables to make leftover lamb curry comes naturally to us. This is a recipe post about using leftover lamb. I’m not writing about how to roast it here. Whichever meat or vegetables need using before the next shopping arrives, often go into my homemade curries. One of my New Year resolutions was buying joints of meat for Sunday lunch. Then I use the cooked meat in leftovers recipes during the week. I hadn’t roasted leg of lamb before but it was easy and had enough meat for 5 meals for 3 people. My husband even had cold sliced lamb sandwiches although there are better ways to use leftover lamb – not least this curry.

From one joint we had the Sunday roast and various other meals. We used the leftover cooked meat in two curries, stew with pearl barley. Some stew was blended as soup. There was even enough leftover lamb to pop into some Cornish pasties. I calculate this leg of lamb joint was under £1 per portion. I still have other leftover lamb ideas to try, such as Middle Eastern lamb dishes with couscous!

If you avoid eating lamb and red meat because of saturated fat content, you’re not alone. I probably only eat lamb once or twice per year but I enjoy it whenever I do. Possibly I’m put off lamb by how much fat you get on chops and small cuts. The advantage of this whole roast leg of lamb was that cooking it on the wire rack allowed much of the fat to drip off so I could avoid eating the ingredients underneath. This meant that the remaining cooked lamb was less fatty. I was much happier eating it as leftovers in other dishes.

Print Recipe

Leftover Lamb Curry with Mushrooms

Very quick lamb curry using leftover leg of lamb from the Sunday roast. Using cooked lamb makes this curry very quick to make.

Prep Time10 minutes mins

Cook Time10 minutes mins

Total Time20 minutes mins

Course: Main

Cuisine: Indian

Keyword: lamb curry, leftover meat, quick curry

Servings: 4

Equipment

• 1 Large saucepan

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 onions medium ones, sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced thinly
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 fresh green chilli finely chopped (or half tsp chilli powder)
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp tumeric powder
• 400 g plum peeled tomatoes canned
• 12 mushrooms decent sized, cut into chunky slices
• 150 g cooked leftover lamb meat chopped into small cubes
• 100 g fresh spinach (or 6 small blocks frozen spinach)
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp ground coriander

Instructions

• Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the sliced onion, garlic and cumin seeds.
• After a couple of minutes add the ginger, chilli, cumin powder and tumeric.
• When all the onion is coated with the spices add the can of peeled plum tomatoes – bash them with the wooden spoon to break up if they’re not ready chopped.
• Add the mushrooms and leftover lamb and stir. Allow the curry to simmer for five minutes.
• If using fresh spinach, pop the leaves on top of the curry and put the lid on so the leaves can steam inside. (If using frozen, microwave it for 1-2 minutes at this point, then add to the curry)
• Simmer for another five minutes. Add the garam masala and ground coriander and serve.

Notes

This lamb curry with mushrooms can be served with rice or flat breads.

The instructions here are to make this quickly as a midweek dish, you can leave it simmering on a low heat for longer if you wish. 

More ideas for using leftover lamb

Although these lamb pitta pockets were made from lamb fillet steaks, you could make them with leftover lamb meat. My Moroccan meatball casserole wasn’t made with lamb but would work well with cooked lamb instead of shop-bought meatballs.