Skinny Irish stew

For dinner tonight we had skinny Irish stew.  The
recipe is from Olive magazine's December 2011 issue.  I found it on the Good Food magazine website by searching for using the words 'lamb' and 'stew'. 

I confess that I have never actually made a stew with lamb before - I've always used beef as that is what my mother did.  Yet every recipe I come across for Irish stew has lamb in it.  From talking to friends, they all use beef in their stew as well, so I'd love to know where all the Irish people are who use lamb in their stew!  Anyway, I decided it was about time I give it a go.

The recipe is fairly simple and easy to make.  All you have to do is brown the lamb, add the onion and through in the rest of the ingredients then simmer for an hour.  The fact that it has to simmer for an hour means that it is not that ideal for making on a work night when quick dinners are more suitable.  For this reason I chose to make it the night before and reheat when I got home.

I used some extra carrots as I had them in and figured I might as well bulk up the stew a little instead of leaving the carrots in the fridge to potentially go off.  I had no chives or parsley in, so instead I used some dried parsley.  I also had no lamb stock cubes in the house so I used a chicken stock cube instead.  It was really tasty, but if I make it again I'd like to try it with the lamb stock to see what it tastes like.  I'd also like to use some fresh parsley and add the chives as well, though it tasted fine without the chives and with dried parsley.

Cost - It is difficult for me to work out the cost the skinny Irish stew as it uses some ingredients that I already had in the house - I had the lamb in the freezer and the pearl barley.  If I remember correctly the lamb was €3.  The potatoes cost €1.29, the carrots cost €1.99 and the onion was 10 cent.  I have allowed 50 cent for the stock cube, pearl barley and for the dried parsley.  I have enough to do dinner for our house for two nights, so the recipe works out at €3.44 for each night.  Not bad.

TIP - You could make this a bit cheaper by just using ordinary carrots instead of Chantenay carrots.  My local Dunnes sells 1kg for 99 cent, so this would make the cost of the carrots just 20 cent, reducing the overall cost of the stew by €1.79.  To be honest though, the Chantenay carrots tasted lovely in this stew.

TIP 2 - This recipe has only 341 calories per serving which is quite good for such a filling dinner.  If you wanted to lower the calories and the fat further, you could leave out the olive oil and brown the meat in it's own juices.  I used the olive oil for brown my meat, but to be honest I really didn't need to so next time I make it I'll be leaving it out.