Home › The World's Kitchen › Shoulder of Mutton, Irish Style
Shoulder of Mutton, Irish Style
Have a five-pound piece tender shoulder of mutton, neatly trim off a little fat, cut in one-and-a-half-inch-square pieces, season with a good teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Thoroughly heat two table-spoons melted lard in a frying pan, add mutton, fry for eight minutes on each side and remove pieces to a plate. Cut four medium-sized onions in halves, finely slice, place and fry in mutton-fat pan for six minutes, remove and place on a plate. Cut six raw, peeled medium potatoes in three-quarter-inch slices, lay a third of the onions at bottom of low earthen pot (one holding about five quarts), place one-third potatoes over onions and spread half the mutton over potatoes. Season with a light teaspoon salt, three saltspoon pepper, sprinkle over one teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and a half teaspoon thyme. Arrange another third of the onions, then a third of the potatoes, and neatly spread balance of mutton over. Season again with a half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper, half teaspoon powdered thyme, and sprinkle over a teaspoon chopped parsley. Spread over balance of onions and potatoes, cover top with thin slices Irish bacon, moisten with a pint and a half cold water, tightly cover pot and set in moderate oven for three hours, being careful to baste surface with its own gravy every thirty minutes, remove and serve in same pot.
A layered oven stew rather than a pot-simmered one, and the layering is the point: the potatoes on top and bottom do different jobs. A heavy 5-quart Dutch oven with a tight lid stands in for the earthen pot.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so "three saltspoon pepper" is three-quarters of a teaspoon. The total seasoning across the dish is generous but not unreasonable for five pounds of meat and six potatoes.
- Moderate oven350F. At three hours covered, the stew is essentially braising, and anything hotter will drive off the pint and a half of water before the meat is done.
- MuttonTrue mutton, sheep over a year old, is sold mainly by halal and specialist butchers now. A 5 lb bone-in lamb shoulder is the usual substitute; boned out it will be nearer 3 1/2 lb, so buy by weight of meat you want on the plate. Lamb is tender sooner, and will be done in about two hours.
- Irish baconIrish bacon is cured back bacon, leaner than American streaky and cut from the loin. Thin slices of any unsmoked back bacon or pancetta work; smoked bacon will dominate the thyme and parsley.
- LardTwo tablespoons of lard for browning 5 lb of meat means working in batches in a wide pan, otherwise the mutton steams instead of colouring. Beef dripping or a neutral oil does the same job.
- The bastingLifting the lid every thirty minutes to baste is the one instruction worth reconsidering. Each opening loses steam from a pot that starts with only a pint and a half of liquid. Baste once at the halfway mark, check the level, and otherwise leave it sealed.
- LayeringKeep the top layer of potato in even overlapping slices under the bacon. The lower potatoes collapse into the gravy and thicken it, while the top layer, protected by the bacon, holds its shape; under a tight lid it will steam rather than brown.
- YieldSix to eight servings. It is served from the pot, so choose one you are happy to bring to the table, and give it ten minutes off the heat before serving.
Irish stew in its plainest form is mutton, onion and potato with water and nothing else, a dish built on what a small holding actually had: an old ewe past breeding, and the potatoes and onions in the clamp. Its reputation as the national dish was established in English and American cookbooks over the course of the nineteenth century. What is happening in this version is a French kitchen's reading of it. The meat is browned first, the onions sweated separately, the seasoning weighed out layer by layer, thyme and parsley added, and bacon laid over the top. None of that belongs to the cottage original, and the result is closer to a Lancashire hotpot than to anything a Kerry farmhouse would have recognised. The instruction to serve in the same pot is the one gesture back toward the source.