Recipe2 min read
Rogan josh, the Sunday way
Mutton, a slow pot, and the chilli that colours without burning.
From the unit at Ganderbal
Every Kashmiri family cooks rogan josh, and no two agree about it. This is the version cooked in Srinagar Muslim homes on a Sunday — onions, ginger and garlic, mustard oil, and a great deal of Kashmiri chilli.
The Pandit version is a different and equally correct dish: no onion and no garlic at all, asafoetida in their place, and colour from ratanjot rather than chilli alone. If that is the one your grandmother made, make that one. We are not going to tell a family it cooks its own food wrong.
Why the chilli matters more than anything else
Rogan josh is a red dish. Not orange, not brown — red, and deep enough that it stains the rice beside it.
That colour has to come from somewhere. In a hurry it comes from a colouring agent, which is why so much commercial "Kashmiri chilli powder" is neither Kashmiri nor honest. Done properly it comes from three tablespoons of real Kashmiri chilli, which carries an enormous amount of colour and almost no heat — you can use that much without making the dish inedible, and you could not do that with any other chilli in an Indian kitchen.
If you have only ever had rogan josh made with ordinary chilli powder, cut with something red, you have not really had it.
The two places it goes wrong
Chilli into hot oil. Ground chilli burns fast, and burnt chilli is bitter in a way nothing later fixes. Take the pot off the heat, add the powders with a splash of water, stir, then go back on. Every experienced cook does this and almost no written recipe says so.
Curd added too fast, or into a pot that is too hot. It splits, and a split rogan josh is grainy for good. Whisk the curd smooth first, add it a spoonful at a time on low heat, and keep stirring one way until it is all in.
What it should look like at the end
The meat should come away from the bone under a spoon but still hold its shape. There should be a thin film of red oil on the surface — that is what the name refers to, and it is the sign that the dish has cooked long enough for the fat to separate and come back.
The gravy should coat rice rather than flood it. If it is thin, take the lid off and let it reduce for ten minutes; if it is too thick, hot water, never cold.
Eating it
Plain rice, and something sharp on the side. In Kashmir that would be a bowl of curd or a little pickle. Bread works, but rice is what it was built for.
And make it the day before if you can. Everything in it is better after a night.
The recipe
Serves 4 to 5 · 20 min prep · 90 min cooking
What you need
- 1 kgmutton on the bone, shoulder and ribs, in large pieces
- 6 tbspmustard oil
- 2black cardamom pods, bruised
- 4green cardamom pods
- 4cloves
- 1small piece of cinnamon bark
- 2bay leaves
- 2 mediumonions, sliced fine
- 1 tbspginger-garlic paste
- 3 tbspKashmiri red chilli powder
- 1 tbspfennel (saunf) powder
- 1 tspdry ginger (sonth) powder
- 1 tbspWazwan meat masala
- 1 cupfull-fat curd, whisked smooth
- to tastesalt
- 2 cupshot water, roughly
What you do
Step 1. Wash the mutton and let it drain properly. Wet meat steams instead of browning, and this dish has no second chance at colour.
Step 2. Heat the mustard oil in a heavy pot until it just begins to smoke, then take it off the heat for a minute. Mustard oil has to be taken to smoking once or it stays sharp.
Step 3. Back on medium heat, drop in the black and green cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and bay. Ten seconds — they should sizzle and smell, not darken.
Step 4. Add the mutton and brown it properly, in two batches if the pot is crowded. This is fifteen minutes of doing very little, and it is where the depth comes from.
Step 5. Push the meat aside, add the onions, and cook them to a soft gold. Then the ginger-garlic paste, until the raw smell goes.
Step 6. Take the pot off the heat. Add the Kashmiri chilli, fennel, dry ginger and meat masala with a splash of water, and stir hard. Off the heat, because chilli powder in hot oil turns bitter in seconds — and three tablespoons of it turning bitter is the whole dish.
Step 7. Back on low heat. Now the curd, whisked and added a spoonful at a time, stirring constantly in one direction. Keep the heat low and do not let it boil until it is fully in, or it will split.
Step 8. Salt, then hot water to come about halfway up the meat. Bring it to a bare simmer, cover, and leave it for an hour to an hour and a half. Check it twice, no more.
Step 9. It is done when the meat gives at the bone and the oil has come back to the surface in a red film. That film is the sign — rogan josh means, more or less, red oil.
Step 10. Rest it off the heat for fifteen minutes before serving. It is better the next day, which is the real reason it is a Sunday dish.
Worth knowing
- No tomato. Kashmiri rogan josh has never had tomato in it, and adding one makes a decent north Indian curry instead.
- If the colour is not deep enough, the answer is more Kashmiri chilli, not a hotter one. That is what it is for.
- Rushing the simmer gives you tough meat in red water. There is no way round the hour.
