Mutton Stew
2 pounds neck, plate or shoulder of mutton 2 pounds potatoes 6 onions Salt and pepper 3 to 4 cups hot water Cut the mutton into small pieces and arrange in a stew-pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and add the hot water. Cover closely and let the stew simmer for one hour, shaking the pan occasionally. Add the potatoes and onions, peeled and sliced, and cook another hour. Serve very hot. If desired, dumplings may be served with this stew.
A plain braise of the sort that filled out weekday dinners before pressure cookers. The proportions are sound; only the cut and the second hour of cooking need comment.
- The cutNeck, plate (the belly-side of the ribs) and shoulder are all fatty, well-worked cuts that need long moist heat. Lamb shoulder or neck is the practical substitute, since mature mutton is rare outside halal butchers and specialist farms. Ask for bone-in pieces if you can; the bones give the broth body it otherwise lacks.
- Trim the fatMutton fat is strong and there will be a great deal of it. Trim generously before browning, and skim the surface before the vegetables go in, or the finished stew tastes tallowy.
- Brown first if you likeThe original starts the meat in water with no searing, which gives a pale, clean-tasting stew. Browning the pieces in a little of their own fat first deepens the colour and flavour considerably and costs ten minutes.
- The second hourTwo hours total is right for the meat but far too long for sliced potatoes and onions, which will collapse into the liquid. Add them in the last 35 to 45 minutes, or cut them in large chunks if you want them to hold shape across the full hour.
- Water quantityThree to four cups barely covers two pounds of meat in a wide pan. Use a heavy pot no larger than needed and keep the lid tight; the stew should stay at a bare simmer, not a boil, or the liquid will be gone before the meat is tender.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper alone is the whole seasoning as written. A bay leaf, a few peppercorns and a sprig of thyme are in keeping with the style and stand up well to mutton.
- DumplingsIf you add suet or baking-powder dumplings, drop them onto the surface for the final 15 to 20 minutes and do not lift the lid; they steam rather than boil.
- YieldServes four generously, five with dumplings or bread.
Mutton stew of this kind is closely related to what most people now call Irish stew: mutton, potatoes, onions, water and nothing else, cooked long in one pot. Mutton meant the meat of a mature sheep, generally over a year or two old, cheaper and stronger in flavour than lamb, and it was common sheep-meat on British tables well into the twentieth century. Its near-disappearance is usually traced to changed grazing economics and the post-war preference for young, mild meat, and the reputation mutton earned in army messes is often said to have helped. The dish uses the cheapest cuts on the carcass, needs no stock, and asks only for a pan with a good lid and two unattended hours.