This St Patricks Day, with the weather still a little bit on the chilly side, why not make a good old casserole to warm you up!

BBC Good Food have a fantastic range of recipes in their magazine and on their website, and after spending some considerable time looking for our favourite St Patricks day food, this Irish lamb stew was the only winner in our eyes! This slow cooked Irish stew is full of hearty ingredients including potatoes, carrots, leek and lamb. As far as Irish recipes go, we think this is a pretty good one, so thank you to the brilliant people at BBC Good Food!

 

Ingredients:

  • 200g smoked bacon cut in to chunks
  • 900g of stewing lamb cut in to large chunks
  • 1 tbsp of sunflower oil
  • 3 onions, sliced
  • 5 carrots cut in to large chunks
  • 6 medium sized potatoes cut in to chunks
  • 700ml of lamb stock
  • 1 leek cut in to chunks
  • 85g of pearl barley
  • 3 bay leaves
  • One small knob of butter

Instructions:

Step 1- If you need to preheat your slow cooker, do that before you start preparing the food. Start by adding the sunflower oil to a frying pan, and cook the bacon until it is crispy. Once it is crispy, add to the slow cooker, before adding the chunks of lamb to the frying pan. Brown the lamb before adding that to the slow cooker as well, along with the onions, carrots, potatoes, thyme, lamb stock, bay leaves and water. The water should cover the lamb. Allow this to cook for 7 hours.

Step 2-After 7 hours, add in the leek and the pearl barley and turn to slow cooker up to high. Cooker the stew for a further one hour until the pearl barley starts to tenderise.

Step 3-Stir in the butter and season to taste. That’s it, serve this delicious slow cooker Irish stew straight in to a dish. If you want to serve something on the side, why not try some colcannon!

Source: BBC Good Food