Irish Stew:

meat, traditionally lamb but usually beef these days
potatoes
onions
carrots
water

Optional:

turnip
parsnip
brussels sprouts
peas
celery greens and GREEN celery stalks (the ones you don’t want to eat)
anything you feel like experimenting with

Seasoning:

garlic
salt
pepper
others discussed below

Traditional Irish stew is the simplest thing in the world. You sear meat (I do not know why this is necessary but the one time I skipped it I ended up with an unappetizing mess), simmer it in water, add cut up potatoes, diced onions and carrots, season to taste, simmer the whole thing for about three hours and you have Irish stew.

There can be so much more to it however.

To begin with, let me discuss a few basic ideas. First stew is always a hearty, uncomplicated dish and the ingredients should reflect that. Red wine adds a lot of taste but a fine wine is a total waste. All the nuances that distinguish two buck Chuck from a fine wine disappear in the cooking. Save the good stuff to drink with it. Secondly, this is supposed to be a CHEAP dish. I use shank of beef, bone in ($1.87 a pound where I shop), russet potatoes and so on. Finer ingredients add little to the total. Finally, there is really no point in just cooking for one meal unless you are cooking for a small army. It keeps very well in the refrigerator (at least a week) and freezes very well. It is not much more work making a big batch and it pays off. We make a huge pot of it (more of a cauldron really) getting at least fifteen meals out of it for a total outlay of about that many dollars.

I learned to make stew from my mother in Ireland. My father died young and my mother went back to work and, as it happened, I was the first home so cooking duties fell to me. At first I cooked the stew exactly as I had been told. Then one day I decided some garlic would not hurt. Everyone oohed and aahed. Then I got the idea of adding curry. Not a lot. Not enough to make it spicy or change the color but it sure changed the taste. This time my mother could not figure out what I had done and I never told her until I left Ireland for America. My stew had come a ways but little did I know it had a ways to go. It took a while because I buried myself in the huge variety of tastes that America has to offer. I will never forget my first great pizza.

Somewhere along the way I was asked to prepare a traditional Irish dish for Paddy’s Day. Corned beef and cabbage was out as that is strictly an Irish American dish unknown to the Irish. Stew it had to be. This time for the first time I added wine. Great idea. Since then I brew a batch at least once a month and experiment all the time. Some additions (parsnips and turnips for example) are OK but do not really add to the taste. Chile peppers, oh my. My wife suggested them without warning me not to add the seeds. We like it but not all will. Oh, when I first made it beef bouillon was part of the recipe but that stuff is mostly salt. Why bother?

This is a simple, hearty dish that can be played with. Play with it.

Submitted by: Niall