Mughlai Mutton Stew

This Old Delhi Style Mughlai Mutton Stew recipe is a royal, delicious assemblage of fine flavors brewed with mutton and spices. Learn to make Karim style (Lucknowi or Awadhi)  Stew at home using this easy pressure cooker recipe. 

With guests at home this week, I was super occupied with their hospitality and feasts were made back to back.

They just left before a while after gifting us good memories to cherish for a lifetime.

I had to catch-up with some me-time, after all, I needed to rejuvenate after back to back work, shopping!

So, just took a nice, long nap and even ideated a couple of recipes in my dreams – yes, because I just cannot outgrow the thought of experimenting with dozens of different recipes even in sleep, ha!

Right now, while I am writing this, I am parallelly making Mughlai Mutton Stew Recipe for our trio.

This recipe is very close to my heart as this is a typical Old Delhi Style (Karim) stew recipe which I grew up eating.

We used to visit the capital at least once a  year and a trip to Old Delhi was inevitable.

It was this stew that we ordered year after year at Karim’s or Al Jawahar and mopping the luscious curry with the thick tandoori bread and gorging on the succulent pieces of mutton was what we looked forward to every year.

My mom experimented with the recipe a few times and came up with this version which is very close in taste to the original ones at Karim or Al Jawahar.

This Mutton recipe is an Old Delhi style stew recipe and just like any other stews, it’s rich with subtle yet complex flavors.

Mutton stewed with onion, ginger, garlic and dry fruits with very few dry masalas added in the curry gives it a very unique flavor. 

Previously, I had prepared Kerala Style Chicken Stew, which had this authentic taste and typical South Indian taste which every one of us liked and I am going to make Kerala Style Mutton Stew very soon but for now, this Mughlai recipe is what you want to try in your kitchen.

Mughlai Stew is a royal, delicious assemblage of majestic flavors brewed with mutton and spices. Its warmth spreads through the body as en elixir and tastes supremely satiating.

Perfect to be served for lunch or dinner, Mughlai Mutton Stew Recipe is considerably easy to prepare as well.

So, definitely try making it while the winter is still around. Gorge on the chunks of mutton and sip its luscious gravy this weekend and thank me later, here’s its recipe:

What is Mutton Stew?

Stew is a dish where vegetables and meat pieces are cooked in liquid.

There are many variations of stew and a lot of countries have their own variations.

Pakistani, Irish, Chinese, South African, Sri Lankan, all these places have their own style of cooking stew.

Even in India, there are various styles of cooking mutton stew – Kerala, Mangalorean, Bengali and this Mughlai.

Mughlai Mutton Stew is a rich curry of goat meat cooked with onion, spices and dry fruits. Oil floats on top of this rich curry and is definitely not for the faint-hearted.

In earlier days, this stew was cooked over a slow wood flame for long hours but now with time a constraint, you can cook it in a pressure cooker too.

Karim’s in Old Delhi serves a delicious Stew and I have tried to match the recipe to quite an extent.

Serving Suggestions

This Mutton curry tastes wonderful with fluffy Naan or Mughlai Paratha.

However, you can serve it with any Indian bread.

At Karim’s it is served with thick tandoori roti to mop all the luscious curry.

My personal favorite to serve with this curry is Bakarkhani Roti.

You might also like

Easy Mutton Curry

Kerala Style Mutton Curry

Bengali Chicken Curry

Step by Step Recipe

Heat ghee and oil in a pressure cooker.

Crush the dry garam masala. Once the ghee is hot, add crushed cloves, black peppercorn, green cardamom, cinnamon, javitri, and bay leaf.

Add onion paste and fry until it is slightly browned.

Now add ginger and garlic paste and fry until onion is nicely browned. Keep adding little water while frying.

Add the masala paste ingredients in a blender along with some water.

Make a smooth paste.

Add mutton and fry on high heat for 4-5 minutes.

Add yogurt, salt and the masala paste made using the ingredients listed under ‘to make a paste’.

Now add 2 cups of water and close the lid of the pressure cooker and cook until mutton is cooked. Let the pressure release. Add kewra essence and mix well.