Curried Minced Beef and Vegetables (Keema)

Hello friends! BBC1 here. I hope you’ve had the kind of weekend you wanted and all is fine in your world. We have had a lovely peaceful and productive one here in Cornwall. You may remember that BBC2 found a bargain on minced steak the other day and we had a ton of it. He made delicious Stuffed Keema Naans, and what we agreed was an ‘ok’ minced beef curry. Because it was just ‘ok’ we agreed not to post it. But, that made me determined to make one that was more than ‘ok’. So I read hundreds of recipes and came up with my own version of Minced Beef Keema Curry. It’s really tasty, not too hot, and has nice layers of flavour. If you do give it go, please let us know what you think, it’s great to get constructive criticism!

Ingredients:
2 crushed green cardamoms
1/2 stick of cinnamon
2 de-seeded dried red Kashmiri chillies (obviously you can leave the seeds in if you like it hotter, also can use whichever chillies you can get hold of or a teaspoon of dried chili flakes)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 medium onions, one diced the other cut into quarters to go in a food processor
3 cloves of garlic
1 inch piece of root ginger
2 Tbs of oil and a knob of butter
500g minced/ground beef (or the meat of your choice)
Two large carrots peeled and diced
4/5 potatoes peeled and cut into inch or so pieces
1 cup of frozen peas
1 can of chopped tomatoes
400ml of beef stock (made mine with a stock cube)
1 Tbs of plain yoghurt
Juice of half a lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Pre heat oven to 180c (Fan).
Place the dried chillies (if using), the coriander seeds and the cumin seeds into a grinder or mortar and pestle and grind to a fine (ish) powder.
Put the garlic, ginger and the quartered onion into a food processor and blend to a paste (if you’re using fresh chillies instead of dried ones I would put them in here and blend them.)
In a heavy bottomed casserole, or a pan that has a lid and can go in the oven, heat the oil and the butter on a moderate heat. Into this place the cinnamon stick and the crushed cardamon pods and fry for approx two minutes. Now add the blended onion, garlic and ginger paste to the pan (be careful it can splutter) and fry this for two mins. If it starts to stick add a little more oil. Next add the dried spices, i.e. The ground cumin, coriander, chili and turmeric and mix into the onion mixture and fry for two mins.
Now add the minced meat and fry to brown, breaking this up with a spoon or spatula. Once the meat is browned add the diced onion, potatoes, carrots and peas and fry these for a couple of minutes. Then add the chopped tomatoes and the beef stock. Bring this to a boil put on lid and place in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.
After 30mins remove lid, skim off excess fat, and cook for a further 30mins without the lid to thicken the sauce. After it has been cooking for an hour stir in the yoghurt and the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste.

We had this with plain rice, one of BBC2’s Stuffed Keema Naans and couple of his onion bhajis (have asked him to write up the recipe for those). I really enjoyed this because it wasn’t too hot and spicy, and I don’t like food that bites you back! BBC2 enjoyed it too and said “it has a nice depth of flavour”…I must say I was very pleased with the result.