Spanish Stew
After a very long day of baking and cooking in the bakery, what do we cook for ourselves? It most often features market veggies & proteins.
My favorite Wednesday night dinner plans include anything and everything that comes home in my market basket.
There are only a few rules for Wednesday night dinners. 1) They must be hearty, we often don’t have time for lunch and are starving by the time we get home. 2) Ingredients are limited to what’s in the market bag or already in the kitchen. No grocery store drop-ins for this or that. 3) Most important — It’s gotta be delicious, but quick. Like 30 minutes max.
It's still soup season - let's make a quick weeknight stew!
This recipe is for a stove top version, but we talked about making this in the Instant Pot — if you have one, you can make this stew happen even quicker.
Spanish Stew
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced
3 ribs of celery, diced
3 carrots, diced
1/2 pound of potatoes, quartered
6 cloves of garlic
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp sweet paprika (skippable if you don’t have any on hand)
1/2 cup of tomato: this could be canned crushed tomato or diced fresh. (Sub tomato sauce or paste to taste in a bind.)
2-3 cups chicken stock (I generally use less, I like stew with less liquid)
1 Tablespoon of lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot. Add the diced onion, celery, and carrots. Cook until carrots are soft, about 5 minutes. Add a generous pinch of salt and a few turns of fresh cracked pepper.
Add the sliced garlic and the paprika and cook until fragrant. About a minute.
Add the quartered potatoes and stir well.
Pour in the stock and simmer for 20 minutes total. At about the 10 minute mark, taste for salt and pepper and add as needed.
Simmer another 10-15 minutes, until the potatoes are soft.
Another check for seasoning just before serving, adjust salt and pepper as needed. Add 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice.
A few notes
If you’d like to add chicken and or chorizo, add pre-cooked shredded or diced chicken at the same time the potatoes go in. Our stew had 2 thighs and 4 ounces of chorizo.
If you’d like to make this stew vegan, use a veggie stock and add pre-cooked white beans at the same time you addd potato.