8 Ground Lamb Recipes To Whip Up For Dinner

Beef, chicken, and pork may be the "big three" of dinner proteins (with seafood coming in fourth), but lamb is often overlooked. This may be due in part to the fact that lamb chops can be pretty pricey, while an entire leg of lamb is large and tends to be fatty. Ground lamb, on the other hand, is much leaner and can make for a budget-friendlier option, plus it's often sold in handy 1-pound packages.

If you're not sure what to do with your ground lamb once you've bought it, burgers are always a great place to start. Instead of serving them with standard ketchup and mustard, though, the more flavorful meat is better suited to Greek-inspired toppings. Ground lamb also lends itself to other Mediterranean-style dishes like kebabs, moussaka, and stuffed peppers, while it also works well in a hearty stew. If you're a linguistic or culinary purist, you may also appreciate the fact that using ground lamb instead of beef puts the "shepherd" back in shepherd's pie.

While stew is typically made with chunks of meat, ground meat makes for an easy, budget-friendly swap that can be just as flavorful. This particular stew was fashioned after moussaka, so it calls for a combination of ground lamb and eggplant cooked in a tomato base seasoned with cinnamon and garlic. Topping off this Greek-inspired dish is — what else? — a generous sprinkling of feta.

Recipe: 30-Minute Lamb Stew

Kofta kebab is a Middle Eastern type of meatball typically cooked on a stick and made with a mixture of beef and lamb. Here, we're going with lamb alone, but you can use a 50/50 meat mixture if this sounds good to you. For flavoring, you'll be using a savory blend of onions, cilantro, cayenne, cinnamon, cumin, nutmeg, and paprika, so the kebabs will taste great on their own, but they may be even tastier dipped in tzatziki.

Recipe: Lamb Kofta Kebabs

What's better than a hamburger? A lamb burger, especially if it's made with Greek-style seasonings such as oregano, garlic, and mint. To make it even more flavorful, top it off with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, kalamata olives, a thick wedge of feta, and a blob of tangy tzatziki for an all-star burger so good it would make Giannis Antetekounmpo say, "Opa!"

Recipe: Greek-Style Lamb Burger

Making moussaka can be a complicated process requiring hours in the kitchen, but if you don't have a Greek yiayia who taught you all of the steps, you can still get a taste of this delightful dish using our simplified recipe. This casserole starts with a layer of potatoes, followed by lamb and eggplant cooked in seasoned tomato sauce. It finishes off, as the best hot dishes do, with a cheesy topping that gets nice and bubbly as it bakes.

Recipe: Easy Greek Moussaka

If Italian meatballs are the ones served on top of spaghetti all covered with cheese, while Swedish meatballs come from Ikea with a side of lingonberry jam, what might Greek meatballs be? Delicious, that's what, as they're made from ground beef and lamb flavored with garlic, mint, oregano, and parsley. This recipe calls for frying the meatballs in a pan, but you could also bake them in the oven if you prefer a more hands-off approach. Once cooked, they can be eaten as an appetizer or stuffed into pita bread for a sandwich.

Recipe: Greek Meatballs

If you want a complete meal in a neat, portable package but are looking to cut back on carbs, stuffed peppers are a perfect dinnertime solution. This recipe does call for rice, but it's a fairly small amount (just 2 tablespoons per pepper) and you can always swap it out for cauliflower rice for a nearly carb-free dish. If you serve these stuffed peppers with a big Greek salad on the side, you may meet or exceed your daily produce requirement in the tastiest possible way.

Recipe: Greek Stuffed Peppers

Moussaka is a dish you're practically guaranteed to find on the menu of a Greek restaurant, since it ranks right up there with souvlaki, spanakopita, and baklava on a list of the country's greatest culinary hits. This classic version takes a little time (about two hours) and a lot of ingredients (we counted 22), but the result is a tasty 10-serving casserole that's perfect for meal-prepping purposes when frozen in single-serve portions.

Recipe: Moussaka

Many shepherd's pie recipes call for ground beef, but technically, such a dish should be known as a cottage pie. A real shepherd's pie, to be worthy of the name, should be made with lamb (or mutton, although this meat may be harder to come by). Our simple version is made with ground lamb, but if you want to cut down on prep time, you can use frozen onions and carrots as well as peas. Heck, we'll even look the other way if you want to use instant mashed potatoes, since if you add some butter, sour cream, or cheese, they'll taste almost as good as homemade for a fraction of the effort.

Recipe: Classic Shepherd's Pie