Stovies

There are so many ways of making stovies that I wouldn’t dare give a definitive recipe. Each region, nay each household has their way of doing it. From what I can gather, stovies started out as  a peasant’s meal using whatever bits of meat that could be found and eked out with a lot of root veg.

In the last few weeks I’ve been busy teaching a healthy eating cookery course. As some of the recipes are meat based, I’ve been getting Mr Plummy Mummy to try them out as I “teach” him how to cook them. And I’m trying out vegetarian versions by replacing meat with quorn.

Here is the amended ingredients list:

Serves 2
Ingredients

• 200g frozen lamb mince for meat version / 200g quorn mince for the veggie one
• 1 vegetable stock cube, made up with 1 pint of water
• 2 large potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 parsnip, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 carrot, peeled and thinly sliced
• ¼ small turnip, peeled and thinly sliced (that’s a swede to the English, a turnip to the Cornish and I think a rutabaga in America)
• 1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• pepper to taste

 

So here is are some pictures of  our efforts.

The meat was browned off without any oil. Then the veggies were put on top, the gravy added and the lid popped back on the pot. For my quorn version, there was no browning needed so I just added quorn to the pan, layered on the veggies and then added some vegetable stock. I had some minced garlic left over from another meal so I chucked that on top too. It didn’t take long to cook. I must admit that I had to have gravy with mine for a bit more flavour. I was very surprised that that I really enjoyed this dish as it’s a lot less spiced than my usual fare, but for a cold Spring day, it hit the right spot. It’s a pretty cheap meal too which is a huge bonus in my books.