Every Sunday I cook up a big pot to be my office lunch for the coming week. It’s usually a stew that combines a protein (generally meat or fish), a bean/legume, and veggies like onions and carrots. So far, I’ve rotated through the following:
Beef chili with beans
Ham, white bean, cabbage stew
Lamb, chickpea, veggie curry
What are some other tasty combinations of these? I have no real dietary restrictions. Thanks!
How about a sort of very simplified cassoulet?
Get a package of duck leg meat, roast in the oven for 90 minutes, cool and debone.
Then in a dutch oven or similar: fry up some diced bacon and garlic in olive oil until it starts to brown. Add the duck, season with crushed black pepper, fry a minute or two more.
Deglaze with a cup of red cooking wine, then add a can(*) of diced tomatoes, a can of haricot beans, and herbs (thyme, chives… any other favorites), and veg of your choice (carrots work well).
Then into the oven at about 375 F for 40 minutes or so to meld while you prepare the starch of the day… rice, pasta, or whatever.
Happens to be tonight’s dinner and almost ready…
Happy eating!
(*) Of course you could use fresh tomatoes and dried rehydrated beans, but canned seem quite good for this.
Fresh thyme, all the time.
I was on a big gandules & rice kick a few months ago. Also called pigeon peas, they’re a legume and thus like a bean, pea or lentil but different. I went for a Puerto Rican type with olives and cold smoked sausage, orange from Goya sazon. It’s easy as can be, arguably the only annoying part is draining and slicing olives.
Chunks of chuck roast, stewed until soft, then shredded and mixed with a good spaghetti sauce. Add in sauteed mushrooms and thin slices of peppers of your choice, and use it to sauce up some pasta or mix it with cooked white beans.
Split peas cooked with hamhock or ham shank until the meat is tender enough to be shredded and added back to the pea soup. Add some diced carrots and celery in with the cooking peas and meat about half an hour before the meat is tender. You can make the final soup thick enough that it’s technically a stew.
I would make a pot of smoked hog hocks with black-eyed peas and onions in chicken broth as per usual for these things. Then add some root veggies that are different from what you usually use, maybe rutabagas and parsnips instead of potatoes and carrots. Season to taste, but remember not to oversalt. The smoked hog hocks and chicken broth are salty in themselves. So, taste first. Simmer until tender.
I have a standby stew I make for my family probably once a month: lentils cooked in stock, with a healthy amount of vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, bell pepper, etc per your preferences), plus some fresh herbs added toward the end (thyme and parsley usually). At the same time, I roast some sausages (I like andouille, but I usually use something less funky for my family), then slice them and throw them in well.
Note that you want the green lentils, not the red ones as they turn to mush.
It’s standard French farmhouse cooking, a nice basic framework that’s adaptable to what you have on hand and what you feel like eating. Want a little spice? Use chorizo. Want to make it more autumnal? Swap the bell pepper for mushrooms. Want to lighten it up? Use vegetable broth instead of stock and leave out the sausage. Or go the other way, making it more hearty? Add chickpeas.
It’s a good back-pocket dish, less a recipe and more a set of guidelines. Downside is that it doesn’t keep especially well; it loses its wonderful toothy texture over time, so you don’t want to make more than you can eat in two, three days max.
Lentils and barley both work well in beef stew. In fact, lentils and barley make a pretty good beef stew, even without the beef.
Hoppin’John.
Theres 100s of recipes. Read a couple you’ll get the idea.
Very easily adapts to what you like.
I happen to like okra in it. But that’s not really popular around here. Stewed okra kind grosses every one out.
I do a hearty bean and pasta soup.
Cut up some chard, so the stems are sliced like celery and the leaves are cut into large squares.
Cut carrots and celery into small pieces.
Saute pieces of carrot, celery, and chard stem in some tasty fat (I use duck fat or olive oil)
Add two cans of butter beans (goya), and a large can each of dark and white kidney beans (progresso), 3 quarts of good chicken stock, and a can of diced tomato.
Bring to a boil, and add a pound of pasta. I like campanelle, but other shapes work fine.
Add the chard leaves and some fresh basil.
Serve tonight as soup, or tomorrow as stew.
It doesn’t have chunks of meat, but the chicken broth gives it a meaty flavor, and the beans are very substantial.