So... first of all, a clear sign that my house is in the middle of our Ireland culture immersion --> One of my son's was walking around the house the other day singing "What will we do with a drunken sailor" by the Irish Rovers! We're about halfway through our Irish itinerary, having watched movies like Darby O'Gill, Far and Away, and Leap Year and listened to The Pogues, Dropkick Murphys, Irish Rovers, Dubliners, Floggin Molly, and The Chieftans. And what do you need while watching and listening to Irish fare? Food, of course. This time, we made Irish Stew.
Now, when I was looking into this to see how to make it, I found that a lot of Americans "Americanize" this dish when they make it by using beef instead of lamb aka mutton.
Well, I didn't want to do that so I had to set out to find lamb.
Not every grocery store sells it after all. When I found it, I had to really take a beat and look at the different cut options because I had no familiarity with lamb cuts. I went with loin chops.
INGREDIENTS
2 1⁄2 lbs lamb chops, cut into small pieces
2 -3 Tbsp flour
3 carrots, peeled and cut in chunks
4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
4 -5 Tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 Tbsp pearl barley
2 bay leaves
1 tsp dried or fresh thyme chopped
2 pints beef stock
3 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
DIRECTIONS
Throw everything in a crock pot and cook till done, Easy peasy.
Bonus, the simmering will make your house smell great! We used this recipe, which called for barley. Barley is harder to find than lamb...at least where I live. So, we left barley out and followed the REST of the recipe. With a couple of seasoning differences (especially the barley, dang it), this is very similar to traditional beef stew. Meat, potatoes, carrots, onions. In lieu of the barley, I'm glad I at least mixed it up a bit by definitely including the mutton. The whole family liked it (except the near-vegetarian wife). The boys got seconds. Granted, once again, I concealed the fact they were eating lamb until after their bowls were empty.
We paired the stew with some bakery bread the looked close to brown bread of blaa that comes from Ireland.
Check out more of our World Culture Tour.
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