In honour of St Patrick’s Day (plus the fact it’s been a really busy week so I’ve been relying on my slow cooker for meals this week), I decided to make Irish Stew which turned out absolutely amazing and within the minimum of effort so I thought I’d share as a great recipe for a warm and filling dinner that you can throw together in minutes.
If you don’t have a slow cooker, I’d just do exactly the same but put in a casserole dish on cook in the oven on a low heat for at least 3 hours so that the meat just falls apart.
Ingredients
Serves 4 if serving on its own or will make 6 portions if you serve with extra veg on the side
- 500g of lean lamb pieces (my butcher had leg meat)
- 3/4 of a pack of frozen casserole vegetables (I got mine in Iceland but pretty sure all supermarkets have their own version)
- 4 medium potatoes – I don’t peel
- 700ml of lamb stock
- a handful of parsley, finely chopped (you could use a tsp of dried instead of fresh)
- 2 bay leaves
- a tsp of thyme (you could use fresh if you have it)
Method
1) Chop your potato into bite sized cubes
I don’t peel my potatoes as 1) I can’t be bothered and 2) the skin contains a lot of fibre and nutrients, I just give them a good wash and remove any spots or sprouts on them. Obviously if you want to peel them you can!
2) Trim any visible fat from your meat.
I try to buy my meat from the local butcher whenever possible, I ask him for the leanest cuts and I find the quality to be so much better.
I was pretty impressed with the tiny amount of fat removed from my lamb this time round
3) I quickly fry the lamb in a frying pan over a high heat for just a couple of minutes to brown it on all sides.
This step is not necessary as you can just put the lamb straight into the slow cooker raw, but a friend of mine who is a chef told me that a quick sear of the lamb seals the flavour in the meat so I’ve always just done that and it’s always tasted nice!
4) Chuck everything in the slow cooker!
So that’s the browned meat, 3/4 of the bag of frozen casserole veg, diced potatoes, the stock, the parsley, bay leaves and time and give it a good stir.
You may want to add a bit more water at this stage if your stock doesn’t cover the contents enough, it will thicken up a lot as it cooks.
The tea towel hack!!!
I never used to be a fan of slow cooking as I found my dishes always ended really watery and didn’t thicken as well as they did when I cooked in the oven but I was introduced to the ‘tea towel hack’ and have never looked back.
You literally place a clean tea towel over the top of the slow cooker before putting the lid on and it soaks up all the condensation that occurs and stops it dripping back into the dish.
Safety warning: I always make sure the tea towel is folded up around the lid so its not hanging down and touching the hot part of the slow cooker and I wouldn’t leave the tea towel like this if I was leaving the slow cooker unattended in case of fire risk (I’ve never had any sort of problem but just wanted to say that safety must come first and is far more important than a watery sauce!).
Also, if you are doing the tea towel hack, be prepared for the tea towel to get stained so don’t use your nice brand new ones. I actually have 2 or 3 which are allocated just for the slow cooker.
I cooked mine on the medium setting for about 4 hours and then turned down to low for about 4 hours.
The potatoes break down a bit and help to thicken up the sauce nicely.
To serve
I steamed some cabbage for some extra veg on the sid
Other suggestions
You can use fresh vegetables instead of frozen – I’d definitely go with carrots and onions as staples, but my frozen mix also included swede, turnip and leeks.
I’ve not tried it with lamb before, but I do love adding some pearl barley to a casserole (you need to add more liquid as the pearl barley soaks a lot of it up!
Serve with any veg of your choice or just have a big bowl of the stew.
Let it go cold before putting in the fridge or freezer (I’ll be eating leftovers for lunch for a couple of days!)
Your slow cooker is a great tool in your healthy eating kit, you can make multiple portions of a warm and filling meal with little effort and if time is short, using frozen vegetable mixes really means that a meal such as this can be prepared in less than 10 minutes.
And as spring approaches, lots of people put their slow cookers away – but my advice would be to keep it out and try different meals in there, there’s loads of great ideas online (if you’ve not tried a whole chicken in the slow cooker, I would absolutely recommend it!).
Hope you enjoy and if you have any top slow cooker favourites, do let me know!
This sounds delicious Georgina, thank you!! Xx
it’s so nice, I had it for dinner last night, some for lunch today and will probably have for lunch again tomorrow and then freeze what’s left for lunch next week!!!! So simple to make too, hope you enjoy!
Thanks for reminding me Georgina. This is one of our favourite recipes – you should always be able to eat Irish stew with a spoon I think and the potatoes thicken it well. I also use the tea towel hack, makes all the difference. All my slow cookery recipes taste different every time, they always start with the basics of carrot, onion, potato, leek and any other veg in the fridge – meat and pulses are the only variables, as well as tinned tomatoes or other stock and herbs, of course.
Absolutely agree on the spoon Eileen, and I had leftovers for lunch today (I cooked it yesterday) and it tasted even nicer as well as had thickened up too! The tea towel hack is a definite game changer in my slow cooking world, we do quite a few soups in ours too!
🍀Sounds and looks amazing! George a great dish to try 🍀
Thank you Sally, it’s a really tasty one (even if I say so myself!) – hope you enjoy!!!