For an Irish feast, traditional lamb stew is simple, hearty
A simple lamb stew is one of the hallmark dishes of Irish cooking and a hearty centerpiece for a St. Patrick’s Day meal. Rich and brothy, with only a handful of ingredients, this is a lamb stew at its most elemental, though different cooks will embellish it in different ways.
A basic lamb stew includes meat, potatoes, onions, water and not much else. Parsley is a typical finishing touch, and sometimes another root vegetable or two are added for more flavor and possibly color. Turnips,
parsnips and carrots are typical examples.
Mutton is the type of lamb most used for stews in centuries past. Mutton is lamb that is older than 2 years, usually between 2 and 3 years of age. It can be very tough, and only low and slow simmering makes it tender enough to enjoy. These days, especially in the U.S., this kind of stew is more often made with lamb under a year old.
With Irish stew – unlike many other stews – the meat usually is not browned before being added to the pot, which eliminates a step many people aren’t that excited about.
If you wish to brown the meat first, you will have more variety in texture and a deeper flavor, but the archetypical Irish lamb stew simply calls for the meat to be cooked slowly with the rest of the ingredients.
I prefer buying a whole lamb shoulder and cutting the meat into 1 ½-inch cubes or pieces. If you buy precut stew meat, it will likely not be as fresh as if you buy the whole shoulder and cube it yourself. Also, you have better control over the size of the pieces. Precut stew meat might be cut into pieces too large tor too small.
The cubes of meat will and should have some fat in them.
Remove larger pockets of excess fat from the shoulder and discard those.
Sometimes flour or cornstarch is added as a thickener, sometimes not. Some of the cooked potatoes can also get crushed up into the stew to help thicken it up. This recipe has no added thickener, but some of the potatoes are added at the beginning of the cooking process and those become fallapart tender and help thicken the stew. Use the back of your spoon to crush some of these against the side of the pot at the end and stir them into the rest of the stew.