his meal is as basic as they come, but it is flavored by decades of family history and love.
Growing up, ours was a meat and potatoes home. When we moved, whether it was across the Atlantic, or across the continental United States, the meals my mother prepared remained simple and hearty. Minced steak (ground beef), roasts, stew meat and pork chops were often featured, paired with some variation of potatoes. Of course, there were new additions and modern conveniences. TV dinners, hot and squidgy in their foil trays, the occasional fish and chips, and the rare fast food hamburger, were all celebrated, special occasion meals.
I am forever grateful that my mother thought to preserve a couple of those simple meals for me. Before she moved back to Ireland after my father’s death, she took the time to write out two recipes for me
My mother’s meals might today be considered heritage cooking, a throwback to older, traditional dishes and, in many ways, they were. But they were also practical, and grounded in her life. My mother was born in 1924. Her father would pass away when she was nine, leaving her mother in charge of her and her two brothers. By that decade’s end, the world was at war. The family took in lodgers. Foods became scarce and rationing was introduced. That rationing would continue until several years following her marriage and after my sister was born. Meat, butter, cheese and cooking oil remained strictly rationed until 1954.
Little wonder most households stuck to a fairly simple diet. I had my first pizza at the age of 18. An Indian friend of my parents introduced us to curry. I discovered tacos in college and bean burritos replaced beans on toast once I moved out on my own. My food world was opening up. Like many young adults, I was determined to make my own path and prove my independence. Those old, simple meat and potato meals seemed anachronistic and bland.
Still, I am forever grateful that my mother thought to preserve a couple of those simple meals for me. Before she moved back to Ireland after my father’s death, she took the time to write out two recipes for me. They are written in her hand, on folded pieces of cardboard that had been part of the packaging for a pair of nylons (in addition to the traditional foods, my mother had learned to save and re-use everything - don’t be wasteful).
A Sunday Roast and a Stew. Meat and potatoes. A food editor recently read the instructions for the stew. It’s very simple, she concluded.
Well, yes. And I have, over the years, made changes and additions and substitutions, as has my son Austin, who is a far better and more adventurous cook than I could ever hope to be. But that happens. We always make our own mark, tailoring things to better meet our own needs or desires.
I’ve added garlic and Guinness and a beef broth I prefer, and I roast the potatoes now. My son has added a spice cabinet’s worth of flavorings.
But when the stew meat is searing and I am peeling carrots in my kitchen in Milwaukee, I am immediately whisked back decades in time and across the Atlantic, to her kitchen on Westland Avenue in Derry, the home we lived in. The home she was born in.
On Saturdays, my mother, sister and I often walked to the butchers. I remember the shop mostly for its dramatic window. An enormous pane of glass running nearly the width of the store, covered in cascading sheets of water. It seemed very theatrical and extravagant for the time, for Derry in the 1960s. A roast was selected, wrapped up in butcher paper and placed in a bag along with that week’s bacon and minced meat and sausages.
On Sunday morning, we walked to Christ Church. Sunday school and then the service, with one or two wrapped pieces of chewy mint sweets in my pocket. Back at the house, my mother and her mother, Granny Armstrong, had begun the Sunday dinner. Often a roast, sometimes a stew. Potatoes and carrots and turnips were peeled and sliced. Sometimes we helped, but if the weather allowed, we would be led off on a long Sunday afternoon walk with my uncle, up into the lanes just above us, farmland then but subdivisions now. Cows and donkeys and mud then, the air a mix of smoke from the turf fires and cow manure.
We’d arrive home, red-cheeked and tired, to a house saturated with the smells of the meal: meat, OXO bouillon cubes, the slight sulfur of the turnips, the earthiness of the potatoes, likely pulled from dirt a few miles away at the most. Surely, a smell which had long filled that house over the decades.
Last week, I made that stew. A simple meal. Chuck steak, potatoes, carrots and an onion in a big, cast-iron casserole pot. But I leave a lot of room in that pot. Because this simple meal carries with it so many memories - of misty walks along farm lanes, of my flinty grandmother at the counter of her kitchen, of the wrapped square of the mint sweet in my coat pocket, of my sister and I walking to Christ Church, of my mother, preparing to leave her grown children behind and pausing to write down this history – and it is steeped in so much love.
Ingredients
The ingredients on the list are from her original directions. See the note below the directions for an explanation of changes I make to her directions. My version adds garlic, Guinness and turnip and now use one tablespoon of Better than Bouillon in place of the OXO cube. I do not use the Bisto gravy mix. I find that the potatoes will usually thicken the liquid plenty, given enough time.
1 lb stew steak or round steak
2 large onions
1 lb carrots
Potatoes – 3 large or 4-5 small ones
1/2 teaspoon butter
OXO beef bouillon cube or Bovril
Bisto gravy mix
Directions
My mother's recipe card did not contain numbered steps. I am reprinting it here more or less verbatim.
Peel onions and slice – small if you want the onions to melt away.
Fry the onions for 5-10 minutes, turning.
Trim fat from the meat and cut into small portions.
Add the meat a little at a time to the pot, turning so the meat browns on all sides.
Stir 1 teaspoon Bovril or OXO cube in 1 cup of hot water until dissolved.
Add the bouillon to the pot and turn up the heat, bringing It to a boil for 5 minutes.
Turn heat to low and cover the pot.
Peel and slice the carrots.
Peel and cut the potatoes into halves or quarters, depending on their size.
Gradually add the carrots and potatoes to the pot, stirring now and again and adding more bouillon If needed to keep liquid nearly to the top of the contents of the pot.
When all is added, turn the heat up and bring to a boil for another 5 minutes.
Lower heat and simmer for 1 hour or more.
Add salt and pepper to taste and continue cooking until carrots soften.
Add Bisto gravy granules to thicken the liquid – 1 teaspoon mixed in a little cold water – and stir while the liquid thickens.
Enjoy.
My updates/changes:I add a couple of smashed garlic cloves to the buttered pot before tossing in the onions.
Once the meat has browned, I empty a half pint of Guinness into the pot and let the meat simmer for a good 15 minutes. Instead of the Bovril or OXO, I I mix 1 tablespoon of Better than Bouillon beef paste with 1 cup of boiling water, stir it well and add to the stew.
I add the carrots on their own, then continue with her directions, turning up the heat for a boil for 5 minutes or so, then reducing to a simmer.
A half hour later, I add a diced, peeled turnip and follow the same, boil/simmer routine.
A half hour later, if I am cooking the potatoes in the stew, I add them and follow the same boil/simmer process. Waxier potatoes will retain their shape, while more floury potatoes such as russets will dissolve and thicken the liquid.
Lately, however, I have been oven roasting the potatoes separately, to have a nice crisp contrast to the soft stew.
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Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Making My Mother's Irish Stew Flavored by Decades of Family History & Love
