Lebanese Lamb Stew with Eggplant

Sharing is caring!

Lebanese lamb stew with eggplant combines two traditional Lebanese ingredients into a tasty stew. Warm spices such as nutmeg and cinnamon turn this savory lamb stew into something truly special.

There’s something really satisfying about eggplants. They soak up flavors like nobody’s business, and it’s no wonder they’re a staple of Middle Eastern cooking. We’ve been slowly working our way through The Lebanese Kitchen, which has dozens of eggplant recipes along with nearly 100 tasty lamb recipes.

What I love about this particular recipe are all the warm spices. Cinnamon and nutmeg combine with the earthy flavors of lamb, and a bit of tomato adds brightness and acidity.

The method is a straightforward braise that works two ways. You roast the eggplant separately so it holds its shape, brown the lamb, build the sauce in the same pot, and then let it go low and slow in either a Dutch oven or a slow cooker. Roasting the eggplant first is the step people skip, and it is the step that decides whether you get distinct cubes of eggplant or a purée.

This recipe has been on Adamant Kitchen since 2018 and readers have been cooking it and reporting back ever since, with ground lamb meatballs, with chickpeas instead of lamb, with lentils, with red peppers, and with the stock cut back for a thicker sauce. Almost all of those adjustments are in this post now, because the comments turned out to be a better guide to what people actually want to know than anything I could have guessed.

If eggplant is what brought you here, my collection of 60+ eggplant recipes covers everything from breakfast to dessert. And if you want the same warm spicing without the meat, the Lebanese butternut squash stew is the vegan slow cooker version of this idea. Full amounts are in the recipe card at the bottom of this post.

Ingredients for Lebanese lamb stew with eggplant

Sixteen ingredients, most of them already in your spice drawer. The order matters more than usual here: the eggplant roasts on its own before anything else happens, the lamb browns before the aromatics, and the tomato paste goes into the hot pot for a minute before any liquid touches it. You will need a heavy Dutch oven or a slow cooker, plus a rimmed sheet pan for the eggplant. Exact amounts are in the recipe card.

• Eggplant: One large globe eggplant, cut into big cubes so they survive the braise. Smaller Italian or graffiti eggplants work and have thinner skin and fewer seeds. Leave the skin on; it is what holds the cubes together once they go into the pot.
• Olive oil: Divided three ways, and eggplant will take most of what you give it. Use a plain everyday olive oil for the roasting and browning rather than a good finishing oil, which is wasted at these temperatures.
• Lamb: Boneless shoulder, cut into cubes. Shoulder has the connective tissue that turns silky over a long braise; leg is leaner and can go dry and stringy at the far end of the cooking time. Stewing goat works identically, as it does in Portuguese chanfana.
• Onion and garlic: The base of the sauce. Dice the onion rather than slicing it, since slices stay visible as strands after hours of cooking and dice disappear into the body of the stew.
• Red wine: Goes into the hot pan after the lamb comes out, to lift the browned bits off the bottom. Any dry red you would drink is fine. To skip it, use an equal amount of extra stock plus a splash of pomegranate molasses or red wine vinegar for the acidity.
• Tomato paste: Concentrated depth and the reason the sauce tastes deep rather than thin. It needs to cook in the hot pot for about a minute before liquid is added, or it keeps a raw, tinny edge that will dominate the finished stew.
• Canned or fresh tomatoes: Chopped, with their juice. One standard supermarket can is what this is built around, so do not drain it. In late summer, an equal weight of peeled fresh tomatoes is better, and any variety works since it is all going to break down anyway.
• Lamb or beef stock: The braising liquid. Lamb stock is the traditional choice and worth making if you have bones, the way the broth builds itself in Icelandic lamb soup. Beef stock is the everyday substitute, and chicken stock works if that is what is open.
• Bay leaf: Do not leave it out. It sounds inconsequential in a pot with cinnamon and allspice in it, but it is what keeps the lamb tasting like lamb underneath all of the sweet spice. Remove it before serving.
• Black pepper: This recipe uses considerably more than most stews, and it is deliberate. The pepper is a counterweight to the cinnamon and nutmeg, so the dish stays savory instead of turning sweet. Freshly cracked is noticeably better here than pre-ground.
• Thyme: Dried thyme, added at the start. If you are using fresh, triple the amount and add it in the last hour, since fresh thyme cooks away to nothing over a long braise.
• Cinnamon: A whole stick if you have one, ground if you do not. The stick gives a rounder, less insistent cinnamon flavor and is easy to fish out at the end. Ground cinnamon tastes sweeter and stronger, so it is the choice that pushes the stew toward dessert territory if you are heavy handed with it.
• Allspice and nutmeg: The pair that makes this taste Lebanese rather than generically Mediterranean. Grate the nutmeg fresh if you can; a whole nutmeg and a microplane grater give you something bright and resinous that the pre-ground jar simply does not have.
• Salt: Season the lamb before browning as well as salting the pot, and taste again at the end. Eggplant absorbs an enormous amount of seasoning, so a stew that tasted right before the eggplant went in will taste flat afterward.
• Fresh parsley: Chopped and stirred in at the table, not during cooking. This is not a garnish you can skip. After four hours of warm spice, the raw parsley is the only fresh, green thing in the bowl and it resets the whole dish.

A note on the eggplant: Modern globe eggplants are bred for low bitterness and do not need to be salted and drained the way older varieties did. What they do need is dry heat before they go into liquid. An eggplant cube that goes into a braise raw will absorb stock and collapse into the sauce within an hour or two. A cube that has been roasted at 400°F first has driven off some of its water and set its structure, and it holds together. If your eggplant is very large, very seedy, or past its prime, a 30 minute salt and drain will improve it, but for an ordinary supermarket eggplant it is a step you can skip.

A note on the lamb: Ask the butcher for shoulder rather than buying pre-cut stew meat, which is usually trim from several cuts and cooks unevenly. Cut it yourself into pieces about an inch across, and do not trim off all of the fat; it renders out over the braise and carries the spice. If lamb is hard to find or expensive where you are, this works with goat, with beef chuck, and with lamb neck, which is the cheapest cut on the animal and one of the best for stewing.

How to make lamb and eggplant stew

The active work is about 30 minutes at the stove, and then the pot does the rest. Read through to step 7 before you start, because the eggplant is roasted early and then held back until the last stretch, which is the one part of the timing that is not obvious.

Step 1. Roast the eggplant. Heat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Cut the eggplant into 1 1/2 inch cubes, toss them with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil on a rimmed sheet pan, and spread them out in a single layer with space between them. Roast for 20 minutes, until the edges are browned and the cubes have shrunk noticeably. Set them aside; they do not go into the pot yet.

Step 2. Brown the lamb. Pat the lamb cubes dry and season them with about half the salt and half the pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy Dutch oven over medium-high heat and brown the lamb on at least two sides, working in two batches so the pan stays hot. Crowded lamb steams instead of browning, and the browning is where a large share of the flavor comes from. Transfer the lamb to a plate.

Step 3. Cook the onion and garlic. Lower the heat to medium, add the last 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and cook the diced onion until it is tender and just starting to brown, about 8 minutes. Add the minced garlic and cook for one more minute, until you can smell it.

Step 4. Cook the tomato paste. Stir the tomato paste into the onions and let it cook for about a minute, until it darkens from bright red to brick and smells sweet rather than sharp. This one minute is the difference between a sauce with depth and a sauce that tastes like the inside of a tomato paste can.

Step 5. Deglaze with the red wine. Pour in the wine and scrape the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to lift every browned bit. Let it bubble for 2 to 3 minutes until the harsh alcohol smell is gone and the liquid has reduced by about half.

Step 6. Add the lamb, tomatoes, stock and spices. Return the lamb and any juices on the plate to the pot. Add the chopped tomatoes with their juice, the stock, the bay leaf, the thyme, the cinnamon, the allspice, the nutmeg, and the remaining salt and pepper. Stir, and bring it just to a simmer. If you are using a slow cooker, this is the point where everything transfers over.

Step 7. Braise, then add the eggplant for the last stretch. Cover and cook gently: 2 1/2 to 3 hours at a bare simmer in a Dutch oven, or 4 to 8 hours on low in a slow cooker. Add the roasted eggplant for the final 1 1/2 to 2 hours of whichever method you are using. The lamb is done when a cube falls apart under light pressure from a spoon.

Step 8. Finish and serve. Fish out the bay leaf and the cinnamon stick. Taste and add salt, since the eggplant will have taken up a good deal of it. Stir the chopped fresh parsley in at the table, or scatter it over each bowl, and serve with warm pita.

Slow cooker vs. Dutch oven

Both methods make a good stew and they make slightly different stews, so the choice is worth thinking about rather than defaulting to whichever pot is clean.

The Dutch oven gives you a thicker, more concentrated sauce, because a heavy pot with the lid slightly ajar lets some liquid evaporate over three hours. It also needs watching. A stovetop burner on its lowest setting still varies a great deal between ranges, and this stew has only 2 cups of stock in it, so a burner that runs hot will scorch the bottom. If your stove will not hold a bare simmer, move the covered pot into a 325°F oven instead and give it the same 2 1/2 to 3 hours. The oven surrounds the pot with even heat and there is nothing to scorch against.

The slow cooker is the hands-off option and the one I use on a weekday. Nothing evaporates from a sealed slow cooker, so the sauce stays looser than the Dutch oven version. If you want it thick, cut the stock back to 1 to 1 1/2 cups, or take the lid off for the last 30 minutes on high. You still brown the lamb and cook the tomato paste in a skillet first; a slow cooker cannot brown, and skipping that step costs you most of what makes this taste like a braise instead of a soup.

A pressure cooker is not the traditional route but it works when you have decided on this at 5 p.m. Use the sauté function on an Instant Pot for steps 2 through 5, pressure cook the lamb and sauce on high for 30 minutes with a natural release, then stir in the roasted eggplant and simmer on sauté for 10 minutes to finish. The texture is very close and the flavor is a shade less developed.

Serving Lebanese lamb stew

Warm pita is the traditional accompaniment and the one I default to, torn and used to scoop rather than set alongside as bread. Beyond that, this wants something starchy underneath it to catch the sauce: plain rice, rice pilaf with vermicelli, bulgur, or in a Vermont winter, buttered egg noodles, which is not traditional in any sense but is very good.

To finish the bowls, use plain yogurt or labneh spooned on top, which cools the spice and looks striking against the dark sauce; a squeeze of lemon; toasted pine nuts; and always, the chopped parsley. A simple cucumber and tomato salad with lemon and mint on the side is the standard companion, and it keeps the meal from being uniformly soft and warm. If you are building out a whole Lebanese spread, Lebanese eggs with lamb and pine nuts uses the same spice logic in a much faster dish.

Storage: Cooled and covered, this keeps in the refrigerator for 4 days and improves for the first two of them. It freezes well for up to 3 months in an airtight container; the eggplant softens further on thawing, so if you know a batch is headed for the freezer, that is the batch to make with the eggplant added at the start and let it dissolve into the sauce on purpose. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator.

Reheating: Reheat gently on the stovetop over low heat with a splash of stock or water, since the sauce thickens considerably in the refrigerator. Avoid a hard boil, which will break the eggplant down. Add fresh parsley to the reheated stew rather than reusing the parsley from the first day, which will have gone dark and lost its point.

Lamb and eggplant stew FAQs

More Middle Eastern recipes

Persian Lamb and Rhubarb Stew (Khoresht Rivas)

Turkish Lamb and Apricot Stew (Kayisi Yahnisi)

Saç Kavurma (Turkish Sautéed Spiced Lamb)

More soups and stews

Looking to expand your soup and stew collection? Try these recipes for bowls of comfort.

• Icelandic lamb soup (kjötsúpa)
• Finnish salmon soup (lohikeitto)
• Icelandic fish stew (plokkfiskur)
• Nettle soup with potatoes and leeks
• Persian lamb and rhubarb stew
• Turkish lamb and apricot stew
• Portuguese chanfana, braised goat or lamb
• Syrian cauliflower stew with lamb