Cooking Keema (Indian-Style Ground Meat)

Last Friday I purchased some ground lamb and a few sweet potatoes at the Bad Seed local farmer's market here in Kansas City. It's the first time I'd ever purchased ground lamb. I had read where it's a very nutritious red meat without many of the concerns that typical ground beef from the supermarket brings with it. I'm always looking for new and tasty healthy eating so I thought I'd try it out.

I found this recipe for "Keema" and thought it sounded good. The only ingredient that it calls for that I didn't already have was the "Garam Masala", which I found at Nature's Own.

The recipe mentions a few modifications like adding peas or potatoes - so I thought I'd add a sweet potato.

Ingredients collected with the recipe

Got my lamb, onion, garlic, garam masala, beef broth, and sweet potato.

I'd never cooked ground lamb before, but I've definitely cooked my share of ground beef, and this lamb cooked just the same. While it cooked, I chopped the onion, minced the garlic, and peeled and chopped the sweet potato.

Once the lamb was browned, I used a strainer to separate the fat, leaving some in the skillet to cook the onions.

After cooking the chopped onion, minced garlic and chopped sweet potato for a few minutes, I added the garam masala (2 tbl spoons), then added the ground meat back in along with some of the beef broth and a couple tbl spoons tomato paste. I let it cook for about 15 more minutes, simmering over relatively low heat. Here's what I ended up with:

OK, maybe it doesn't look that great, but it smelled wonderful. This type of meat mixture is often used in Indian cooking as a pastry filling. The recipe suggested serving it over rice or noodles. I've had enough rice lately, and don't have any gluten free noodles (don't think I'd really want this over noodles anyway), so I thought I'd serve it with corn chips.

Definitely this recipe is a winner! Its spicy, not too hot, has a hint of the sweetness of the potato.

Oh, one note, the recipe calls for a teaspoon of salt, but instead of salt I used something called "Herbamare", which is a mixture of fresh organic plants and aromatic sea salts. Exercise for the reader: find out where to get that stuff online! I love it!

The corn chips had their own salt - so the meal was plenty salty, but if you were to serve this with some indian style bread, then you may want to add regular salt, instead of the Herbamare.