Spicy Slow-Cooked Lamb Chops

This, our second use of the Slow-Cooker, was a weeknight meal. Once again, I just followed my instincts rather than actually doing any real legwork prior to cooking, and it all came out marvelously. The beauty of it is that virtually none of the work was done in the 5-6pm bracket. I got the meat out of the freezer the night before, prepped the marinade, and got the veges ready. Then in the morning before I left for work (6am), I coated the chops in the marinade and left them to sit. C then put the meat in the cooker at lunchtime and popped the veges in with about 2 hours to go, so come 5.30, all I had to do was steam up some greens.

I know that the grand idea here is to be able to put a meal on at about 6am and have it ready with no extra attention being paid to it until its ready about 12 hours later, but its early days yet. Soup and stew are all on the menu for coming weeks, so I'll see how those go when we get there.

Spicy Slow-Cooked Lamb Chops

In a bowl, mix up the following:


3 finely sliced or crushed cloves of garlic;
1 small dried chilli;
Zest of 1 lemon;
1 t of fennel seeds;
1 grating of nutmeg;
freshly ground salt and pepper;
1 T of brown sugar;
1 T of balsamic vinegar;
a handful of washed, chopped fresh mint.

Toss about 800g of lamb chops in this marinade and leave for 6-12 hours.


Peel and chop 2 onions, 1/4 of a large pumpkin, 6-8 potatoes, and 2 kumera. Place in a bowl and toss with freshly ground salt and pepper. Leave to sit with the meat.

When you are ready to start cooking, chop an onion and place it in the bottom of the slow cooker dish. Place the meat on top of the onion, add about 1 C of vege or beef stock, and turn the Cooker on High for one hour. Turn down to low and leave for a further 3 hours. Add the veges and leave for a further 2 - 3 hours.

Alternatively, place everything in the Slow-Cooker and turn on low. As long as its been cooking for at least 7 hours, it'll be lovely by the time you're ready to eat. Following the method above, the veges still had their firmness, but by leaving them in for the duration they will be falling apart by the time you dish, which is also nice.


Serve with steamed greens and a drizzle of the cooking juices as gravy. Lovely Winter Nosh!