I decided to channel into my Irish roots and make me some good, hearty Irish stew!! For those of you who don't know: Irish food usually is a very "meat and potatoes" kind of food, so don't expect to get your dose of veggies with this recipe :P But on a cold, hungry day, this kind of hearty stew hits the spot :D
Here's the recipe!!
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Irish-Stew/Detail.aspx
Quick synopsis!
Rating: 4/5
Cost: less than ~$25 bucksss
Difficulty: a little difficult, especially if you're not used to working with hot grease
Eat it again?: YESSS
Allergies: if you're allergic to meat and potatoes, I cry manly tears for you.
So I didn't make a ton of changes to this recipe, but I probably should have lol. Usually when I look over recipes, I try to substitute less healthy things with more healthy things. This time, my brain was on autopilot and I just bought and cooked it just like the recipe told me to- and this recipe is definitely not healthy XD I didn't realize until I was cooking the onions and garlic in bacon grease that this recipe was probably not very heart/health/cholestorol/fat/life friendly. xD Whatever it tasted awesome. The changes I did make were I substituted the lamb with pork (couldn't find lamb shoulder) and I used about half of the meat suggested. This recipe calls for way too much meat. Use about half of the suggested amount if you want a stew. Use the whole amount if you want pork shoulder with sauce :P
Quickly, before I start, lemme just give you a couple healthy alternatives to the recipe (NOTE: these tips have not been experimented with and may deter from the taste):
-use low fat bacon, turkey bacon,or low sodium bacon
-do not cook the shoulder, onions and garlic in the bacon grease. Dump the grease (in a safe container!) and use oil instead.
- use less meat and more veggies!
-try to cut off as much of the pork/lamb shoulder fat as possible- the shoulder is a pretty fatty part of the animal.
-skim the excess fat off the top of the stew when its simmering
I don't think I made a ton of mistakes while making this, if any at all. The recipe is fairly straight-forward. The only thing I'd worry about is working with hot grease and bacon fat. If this is your first time cooking bacon, please be careful! The bacon grease gets very hot and it makes a very sizzly sound when you cook it, so it can be intimidating. If the grease starts to pop at you, turn the fire down or take it off the flame for just a little while. The oil should not pop in your face. If it does, rinse off with cold water immediately to avoid permanent burn marks or semi-permanent pain. And since bacon is made of pork, its important to cook it thoroughly. Raw pork is bad news!Also, bacon grease is totally great to cook with if you want a nice, rich flavor. It really shows when you make this recipe. But if you wanna be healthy, dump it.
The flavor of the stew was really good!! I was pleasantly surprised. It was perfect over rice on a cold day :) I was not skeptical that it would taste good (the recipe had enough fat in it to float a small island, and fat = flavor), but I was skeptical that it would feel very gross and fatty going down. Actually, it didn't at all! After simmering it for the time suggested in the recipe, all the flavors just kind of worked together and made a very hearty stew. :)
The stew supposedly tastes better after a few days of sitting in the fridge, which makes it even more awesome! I'll definitely be making this a lot during the winter :) Thank you for watching over my cooking experiment, old, Irish ancestors of mine!!
