St. Patty's Day Potluck

If you couldn't tell from the picture in my profile, I am of Irish heritage and really enjoy exploring the culinary styles of my ancestral home. Over the weekend, my friends and I did an Irish potluck to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. My friend Jalera contributed White Chocolate Hazelnut Cakes (not terribly Irish, but good) and Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms. If you'd like the recipe for those, the link to her blog is on the right. She promises she'll have them up this week.

My contribution to the dinner was Irish Stew. It turned out really well. I wish I had pictures for you but Jal has my camera and hasn't given it back yet.

Irish Stew
Guinness Stout has long been one of my favorite cooking ingredients. It provides a depth and richness to broths and sauces, does a pretty good job of pulling the gamy taste out of venison, and you can drink the leftover ingredients. Try that with corn starch! This stew varies quite a bit from tradition by necessity. Traditional Irish Stew is cooked on the stove top and finished in the oven. I had too many people to feed and not enough time to babysit so I did mine partially on stovetop and partially in the crock pot. Also, traditional Irish Stew is typically made with lamb or mutton. Mutton is nearly impossible to find in Tennessee and lamb is considerably more expensive than my budget allows so I went with a Boston Pork Butt which was on sale at Piggly Wiggly for $.99 a pound.

Ingredients:
Boston Butt Pork Roast (mine was about 8 lbs. but I only used about 4)
6 Red Potatoes
3 Cups of Baby Carrots
2 Bottles of Guinness Extra Stout
1 cup water
1 Tbsp. of Paprika
1 Tsp. Peppercorns
2 Tbsp. Canola Oil
Salt and Pepper to Taste
Garlic Powder to taste

First order of business is to break down your Boston Butt. I use a Chinese Cleaver for this but any good knife will do. Start by cutting the blade bone out of the center of the roast. It's ok to leave a little meat on the bone. We're not professional chefs here and we're going to get some use out of it anyway. Once you've extracted the bone, put it, a Tbsp. of salt, a Tsp. of peppercorns, and two bottles of Guinness Extra Stout into a pressure cooker. Put this on the stove and pressure cook for one hour.

While you're doing that, heat 1 Tbsp. of Canola oil in a large skillet (I used a wok for this), and begin to break down your meat. I cut mine into 1/2 inch or so cubes. Gives them enough size to provide some chew, but not enough to choke your guests. If you want your stew to be extra thick, give the pork a toss in some corn starch before putting it in the skillet. I like a little juice so I skipped this step. Add the paprika and garlic powder and give your cubed pork a quick fry in the oil until you get a decent crust on the outside. This usually takes 3-4 minutes at high heat. When you're done, add your pork to the crock pot.

Add the second Tbsp. of oil to your skillet and toss in the baby carrots. Let those cook while you cut the red potatoes. I just quartered mine but how small you cut them depends on how big your potatoes are and how big your mouth is. Once the potatoes are cut, add them to the carrots and stir to cook. Again, you don't have to cook them soft, just so they have a little browning on the outside. This took 5 minutes or so of cooking. When done, add this to the crock pot.

Add 1 cup of water to the empty skillet and stir with a wooden spoon to get all of the crusty bits left in the bottom up. This should only take a minute or two. Add this liquid to the crock pot and start cooking.

By the time you finish this, your broth should be nearly done in the pressure cooker. Once it's finished, fish out the bone and dump the broth into the crock pot. Stir everything to mix well and cook on low heat for 10 hours.

The resulting stew has a bold body provided by the pork and the stout.