6th Dish Irish Stew from Ireland.

If you ever attempt any 30 day challenge yourself, one of the things you'll have to take into account is that everything will revolve around it. 

I'm sure for those who regularly cook for their families, this is second nature, and however for a novice cook as me everything has to be planned to military precision.   

On Wednesday when I cooked this, I had to take my mum to Heathrow airport which is an eight hour round trip. As well as this I also have a business to run so had to work five hours in the shop beforehand. 

As I was spending most of my day away from home, my challenge was to cook something that was fairly easy to prepare and something I could leave in the slow cooker. 

As I’ve made English stews before I knew that I was in safe hand by trying a stew from Emerald Isles. 

Ingredients

2 1/2 lb boned mutton
4 large potatoes
2 large onions
3 or 4 medium carrots
sprig of parsley
2 cups water
salt and pepper

Method.

• Cut the meat into good size chunks. 
• Peel the vegetables and slice thickly. 
• Chop the parsley. 
• Choose a pot with a well-fitting lid and put in the ingredients in layers, starting and finishing with potatoes. 
• Pour in the water and season to taste. 
• Cover and put on a very low heat for about 2 1/2 hours until the meat is tender and the potatoes have thickened the liquid. (I used a slow cooker set on low for 6 hours.)
• The dish may also be made with lamb, in which case it requires only 1 1/2 hours cooking time. 

Now for the Military precision bit. 

Finish work at 10am. (Actually it was a little after 10)

Rush home, and prepare all the ingredient. (My lamb was bones, so I had to de-bone it with my blunt knife.)

Put everything in a slow cooker. (We recently got a new one, and this was the first time we'd used it so had to read the instructions.)

Quickly shower and change clothes

Out the door by 12pm (It was closer to 12:30 by the time we eventually got out.)

Get mum to the airport by 3pm.

Spend some time shopping nearby.

Be back home for 10pm.(We hit rush hour in London! I’ve never seen so many cars, and so many angry, frustrated people. Luckily I wasn’t in hurry, so I was able to chill and take it in my stride.

Arrived home closer to 11pm)

 

We didn’t eat the Stew until the following day, and it was delicious. The lamb was so tender and just melted in the mouth.

This easily gets 9 out of 10.

I’ll definitely be cooking this again.

Ammo