I’m making lamb in a yoghurt-coconut curry. Vaguely something like this recipe. The gravy tastes absolutely divine, and the lamb has absorbed my marinade beautifully, BUT…!!
The damned, stupid lamb is tough! AAARRGHH!!! :mad:
Is there anything I can do while the stuff is stewing (which it is, at this moment) to make it a tad more tender?
Someone please help… 
The only possibility of tenderising is to cook the lamb slower on a lower heat. If everything is in though, you will ruin your vegetables doing this. So it’s going to be a compromise. Sorry it’s not much help. Hope it turns out nice anyway. 
Hmm…I’m doing precisely that…cooking it on a low heat for a long time…the vegetables will be all the better for it, from the looks of it.
But do you mean that the lamb will become more tender the longer it cooks? I thought it would become tougher…
Can you extract the lamb temporarily and put it in a low oven, while allowing the sauce to cool down in order to preserve the vegetables? After the lamb’s had a while in the oven, recombine and heat up again?
Afraid not. The grand kitchen I use has three gas burners, a refrigerator, and a sink. No oven within miles.
The lamb may simply seem tough because you are sampling it straight from the oven. Meat need about 10 minutes of rest, covered with foil to retain the heat, after cooking. This allows the fluids to be reabsorbed and the meat will seem more tender. If not you got a dud. It happens that even the best cooks can’t overcome crap meat except with a crockpot(slow cooker).
And the lamb should not be well done.
I just tried a bit of it, and while it doesn’t melt in the mouth, it’s not that tough either. I’m not sure if it was the lengthy cooking time that did it, or letting it sit aside after cooking, but it does seem pretty okay now.
A success, considering this is the first time I’ve touched lamb!
Thank you all!
FWIW, Costco has frozen pre-cooked lamb shanks marinaded in something like garlic and rosemary. 4 shanks for $19 or so. Each in their own hermetically sealed pouch. Open and pour out the stuff onto a baking sheet, put in oven for like 35 minutes at 350 and you have a mini My Big Fat Greek Dinner!
Why is it you can’t hardly find lamb (or goose) anywhere?
If you cook it quick and hot, lamb will be tender and ideally slightly pinkish inside. If you cook it long and low, it will be a different kind of tender - the meat will be firm, but will crumble apart easily into pieces. In between these two extremes it can turn out rubbery and tough.