Traditional Irish Stew

This melt in your mouth traditional Irish stew is so incredibly delicious! The potatoes soften to the buttery onions and tender meat layer and make this not just an easy stew to prepare but probably one of the best stews I have ever tried.

I love the simplicity of this traditional Irish stew, many of the Irish recipes I have been researching are very simple and seasonally similiar to Scottish foods. Quite often the most simple of recipes are the best recipes and that sure is the case with this lovely traditional Irish stew.

As a busy family of six I love an easy quick recipe for dinner and not only is this stew super delicious it is ridiculously easy to make! I love how it only uses one pot and you can quite easily add in additional vegetables to the layers of this stew and vary up the type of meat used.

This is my first traditional Irish recipe and I hope to share a sprinkle of more traditional Irish recipes across this blog, the food fits so well with traditional Scottish recipes as they are using the same seasonal ingredients with variability in whats available in Ireland. I’m certainly not going to pretend to be an expert on Irish food and culture I’m not but I love researching old recipes and have really enjoyed researching the old Irish recipes. You can expect to see some delicious Irish recipes popping on here now and again! 🙂

If your enjoying the sound of this delicious Irish stew you may want to pair it up with some of my lovely traditional Scottish recipes to make a meal of it. Traditional Scottish foods and traditional Irish foods work really well together, in my opinion, as they are traditionally made with mostly the same seasonal ingredients. The traditional Scottish Potted Trout makes a delicious light starter and can also be made with salmon. You could also serve the potted salmon on some of my lovely homemade Scottish oatcakes. If your feeling adventurous and love a good pudding the Scottish Fatty Cutties are delicious served warm with a good dollop of ice cream and a drizzle of local honey or sauce.

Tips for making this recipe:

You can vary up the vegetables in this recipe by adding in additional vegetable layers or sprinklings of chopped greens for eg. or different seasonal herbs would also work really well in this traditional Irish recipe. Carrots or parsnips would also work really well as an additional vegetable layer or a seasonal chopped greens layer.
There are different ways to layer up the traditional Irish stew and in my research I found that there were several variations and also different variations of stews from different areas of Ireland. Its quite interesting to experiment and try different layering methods in this recipe.
I don’t like lamb??? – thats cool you can try this with beef or whole chicken cuts might even work. I would go for beef shin as that works really well in a stew recipe or oxtail pieces would work really well in this recipe too. If you can’t get your hands on those cuts some plain old beef chunks from the supermarket will do just fine. If its a lean cut just be sure to use all the specified butter to ensure its not too dry.
You can make this stew ahead of time leave it to cool and pop it in the fridge for another day. It heats up really easily in the oven just be sure to pop a lid on it so you don’t dry it out in the oven and set the oven to about 150-160oc, nothing too hot for reheating.
Leftovers work really well in a sandwich or a wrap with a load of fresh salad to balance it all out. A wholegrain roll is delicious served with a dollop of this stew.
You can serve this stew up with delicious fresh seasonal vegetables, greens work particularly well and any type of kale is good on the side also. It doesn’t really need a carbohydrate on the side due to the quantity of potatoes in the stew.
You could also use olive oil or coconut oil instead of the butter but I find the butter works really well to flavour and sweeten up the dish.

Irish Stew Recipe

2tbsp salted butter
4 medium onions sliced
4 medium potatoes sliced
2tbsp parsley or other fresh herbs
450g lamb neck cut into medium sized cubes
2-3 cups of vegetable or other homemade stock
salt & pepper

Recipe Instructions

Preheat the oven to 160oc (fan)
Melt the butter in a large oven proof pan, as per the video at the top of this post, on a medium to low heat.
Start layering up the stew by layering half of the sliced potatoes on the bottom of the pan. Layer up half of the onions on top of the potatoes covering all of the potatoes. Sprinkle some herbs in here too and season with salt and pepper between the layers.
Add all of the lamb spread across the onions layer as the next layer and season generously with salt and pepper and a sprinkle of herbs.
Add another layer of onions with the remaining onions and sprinkle any leftover parsley in here. Add the remaining potatoes on top of the onion layer to make the final layer of this stew. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle any remaining parsley on top of the potatoes.
Pour in the stock to just under the potato layer, you might need a little more you might need a little less thats ok. Just use what you need.
Bake in the oven for 2 hours and 30 minutes, check at an hour to make sure there is enough liquid. Remove the lid for the last 30 minutes to crisp up the potatoes on top and reduce the liquid down a little further.
Serve with freshly cooked vegetables.