Lamb Stewed in Leftover Red Wine

Lamb Stewed in Leftover Red Wine

A recipe for lamb stewed in some leftover red wine with some honey, some vegetables and some herbs too of course.

ole twimii recipe lamb stewed in left over wine This is an old twimii recipe – from 2012 I think. I originally called it leftover lamb stew. So most people who visited it were searching for what to do with leftover lamb. You can make Shepherd’s Pie with leftover lamb. But this recipe is what to do with the two-thirds empty bottle of red wine that has been lingering in your fridge door. You don’t want to drink it. So what to do? By the way in the recipe I say I wouldn’t use a bottle that has been in the fridge for longer than a week in a stew – well that’s definitely not true these days anyway. If you have no idea how long the bottle has been there just add a little more honey.

This recipe is not gluten-free but you can use gluten-free flour instead. Or thicken the gravy with cornflour. Alternatively don’t bother with any type of flour. Just cut the amount of stock in half, let the liquid thicken with the fat from the meat and the tomato purée. It will be a less thick gravy but still very good.

The whole concept of finding half-drunk forgotten bottles of wine in your fridge door may be completely foreign to you. In that case, think of this as what to do when you get a bottle of wine that tastes undrinkable. Not in a “there’s something definitely wrong with this” sort of way. Just in the “oh that’s way too sharp or bitter or whatever” sort of way.

The original post

I moved a couple of weeks ago. And of course in the process I cleared out the fridge freezer. I discovered frozen lamb chops in the freezer. When I bought them, why I froze them, who knows? Maybe they were a present from the forget-me-not food fairy.

I also found an unfinished bottle of red wine in the fridge. I don’t know how wine bottles manage to blend in with the rest of the stuff in the fridge so well. I stopper the bottle and then it just disappears. Until I notice it about a month later when it is totally unusable. This particular wine bottle had only managed to evade notice for about a week or so, I believe. So while it definitely wasn’t drinkable it was still good for stewing.

One of the first savoury recipes I ever made was Delia Smith’s boeuf en daube. The reason I made it was because the bottle of wine we had was undrinkable. So I added a load of maple syrup to it (the only addition I made to the recipe) and made boeuf on daube. And it was lovely. I’ve never made it since. But as I went through my fridge I found the usual suspects waiting to be used. Carrots, onions, celery, overripe tomatoes and mushrooms that were a day away from needing to be thrown out. I decided it was time to find a use for my leftover wine.

Throw it all in

Now this is a much more thrown together sort of recipe than the boeuf en daube. You can add whatever root vegetables you have in the fridge that you want to use up in with it.

Oh, and when I made this the gravy was actually a slightly mauve-grey-brown colour. The camera didn’t pick it up but if I was making this for people I’d definitely add in a couple of tablespoons of tomato purée simply for the colour.

lamb stewed in leftover red wine
Stewing red meat in some red wine, a little sugar or honey, some herbs and some veg with onions and/or garlic, it can’t go wrong really. It seems to work every time. Also a bit of root ginger can be lovely in this too.

Lamb Stewed in Leftover Red Wine

Serves 4 - 6

Lamb Stewed in Leftover Red Wine

Ingredients

  • 4 - 6 frozen lamb chops
  • 1/3 bottle red wine
  • 2 tbsp herbes de Provence mix
  • 3 carrots, chopped roughly
  • 2 onions, chopped roughly
  • 3 celery sticks, chopped roughly,
  • 2 large tomatoes, quartered
  • 8 mushroom caps
  • 1/2 pint vegetable stock
  • 2 tbsp heaped plain flour
  • 30g butter
  • 2 tbsp runny honey
  • salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Put the frozen chops in a tub or bowl you can cover. Sprinkle over one tablespoon of the herbes de Provence and pour over the wine. Add the carrots, onion and celerly. Mix around gently but make sure that the chops stay covered by the wine. Cover and leave in the fridge overnight.
  2. The next day, pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 1/ 275°F/ 140°C, and heat some oil in a casserole, or some dish you can use on the cooker top and then transfer to the oven. With a slotted spoon, remove the chops from the marinade and sear them in the hot oil, till they are browned. Reduce the heat and add in the vegetables. Don't add in the liquid just yet.
  3. Stir in one tablespoon of the flour. Stir it around for a couple of minutes so that it is well cooked but don't let it burn. Now stir in the liquid marinade and runny honey. Next stir in the vegetable stock, one tablespoon of herbes de Provence and a good pinch of salt and pepper. Bring to simmering point, cover with a tight-fitting lid, then place the pot in the centre of the oven and cook slowly for 2 hours.
  4. When it's ready, work the remaining flour and butter into a paste, remove the casserole from the oven. With a slotted spoon remove the lamb and veg to a serving dish. Now add the flour/butter paste to the gravy in the casserole, place on a medium to high at on the cooker top and reduce down to a nice gravy consistency. Taste and season as necessary. If you are not happy with the colour, add in a tablespoon or two of tomato purée.
  5. Pour over the lamb and serve with mashed potatoes or rice.
http://twimii.com/recipes/lamb-stewed-leftover-red-wine/