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It’s a stew! Add a pastry top and you have twice the comfort of a regular stew!!
Okay, I labeled this as “intermediate” because it does take some time and patience, and that can be hard to come by as a beginner-but that doesn’t mean it’s not for beginners!!
If you can’t tell already, it’s your basic stew. Most of the ingredient amounts can be changed around to your taste, and if you prefer, you can always change the spices up to make it more “ethnic” if you like.
Bear with me, this is the first recipe I’ve ever written down-no joke!
Here goes!
1. If you purchased your lamb pre-cubed, you can skip this step. Otherwise, cut the lamb into uniform sized cubes, the size is your choice, but I prefer pieces about the size of a whole pecan.
2. Dry, season and lightly flour the lamb. It’s important that it be dry pre-cooking. You need just enough flour on the pieces of meat to lightly coat them. The flour will give the lamb a nice brown color, and help thicken everything towards the end.
3. In a heated pan, add approximately 1 pat of butter, and once it’s melted, lightly brown the lamb on medium heat. Do not cook it all the way through!! It will get tough! Once it’s just slightly browned all over, parts may be slightly pink, remove and set aside.
4. Add the carrots, onion, and celery (aka mirepoix) to the pan and saute on medium heat until the celery is soft (don’t worry about the carrots cooking through right now). You don’t have to, but you can remove all the veggies for the next step. I did, but I can’t imagine it makes a HUGE difference.
5. By now there’s a lot of stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan. Add in just enough red wine to the pan (still on the heat) to de-glaze. You may have to scrape the stuff off a little, I suggest you use a wooden spoon.
6. Now, add everything (meat, and mirepoix if you removed it) back into the pan and add your tomatoes and herbs.
7. Cover, check your seasoning and let simmer on low heat for about 30-45 minutes. Like they say, low and slow makes for super tender meat! Take this opportunity to pre-heat your oven to 350F.
8. Optional: if at the end of cook time the liquid isn’t as thick as you like, remove meat and heat the liquid on high heat to reduce. It should thicken pretty quickly. Also, keep in mind that reducing will intensify the saltiness.
9. Homestretch! You should only need one pie crust (most packages come with 2), but if you want a top and bottom, go for it. Roll out your crust and remember to poke it with a fork so it can vent.
10. In whatever oven-safe dish you like, pour in the lamb stew and cover with your pie crust. You may have to trim the crust so you don’t have excess crust hanging out, but I just threw the scraps on top because I like a lot of crust.
11. Throw it in the oven until it’s light brown around the edges (about 15-20 minutes), and then it’s DONE.
12. Remove and let it cool for a few minutes. Serve with whatever you like! I did mashed potatoes because who doesn’t love stew and potatoes??
The End.
2 Comments
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annamalfacts on 5.13.2011
Sorry about it being dry! Usually the tomatoes and covering the pot are enough to keep things moist. As for the oven, I have long suspected that my oven overheats-I’ll adjust the recipe. Thanks for the feedback!
fhigson on 3.30.2011
Hi, just finished making this and the taste was very good but I had a problem with it being kind of dry. The only liquid in this recipe is 1/4 cup of wine to deglaze and that evaporates pretty quickly, then there was no liquid left. I kept adding some water to get some sauce. Also the pie crust does not brown in 15 minutes on a 350 oven. I had to up raise the temp to 450.