jdd2035, you must be an extremely patient person. The most I ever spend on making food is about 3 hours, and even that's on special occasions when we make what might be translated as shepherd's stew. The recipe is rather simple:
- 2-3 types of red meat. Beef and pork are the basics, some pig's feet if you can get them (I kid you not, pig's feet make this thing much better. You won't really eat them, but they add a lot of texture to the soup, making it thicker). Boar or venison meat if you're extremely lucky to get some. Lamb and goat can also be used, but I don't use them. I hate lamb and don't eat it in any shape or form, and goat is probably my favorite meat, so I like to eat it just regularly cooked without much seasoning, so I can taste the meat.
The amount of meat depends on the size of your cooking pot and the people you want to feed. Let's say 2kg of meat total, chopped in bite-sized chunks. That's probably enough for around 6-8 people, depending on how hungry they are.
- Onions - you need almost as much onions as you have meat. So if you have 2kg of meat, you need about 1.5kg of onions chopped up in as small bits as possible. But it really depends how thick you want to stew. If you want it more soupy, add less, but I wouldn't go under 1:2 onion/meat ratio.
- Ground paprika, both regular and hot. Smoked ground paprika if you can get it.
- Salt and pepper
- Vegeta (no relation to the DBZ character; it's a seasonings mix that's really popular here in Croatia and it's awesome)
- Bay-leaf
- White wine
- Water
- Optional (but preferable): A tripod and a pot to hang from it on a chain if you're doing it outside (as it really ought to be done)
You start with dropping all the chopped onions into the pot with some water and letting it come to a boil. If you have pig's feet, add them in once the onion boils, cover them with some water and let them cook for half an hour.
If you don't have pig's feet, move onto the meat. The meat should be added in increments, depending on the type. If you have boar or deer, it should go in first and cook for half an hour before you move to the next. The order is (more or less): pig's feet, boar/deer, beef, pork. You should also keep adding water every time you add meat, since the meat needs to be covered with it.
Also, once you add the first batch of meat, add the seasonings as well. I can't really tell you how much, because we generally eyeball it and keep adding some additional seasoning as we add meat and water. You just taste the soup and make a decision on your own. The only thing you have to be certain of is not adding too much paprika, because then the stew becomes bitter.
Anyways, once you add the last batch of meat, pour in about as much water as it fits in the pot (this again depends on how thick the stew is, because if there's less onions it will be more soupy and you shouldn't add that much water to it) and then don't add anymore. Let it simmer for another hour or so and add seasoning as you deem necessary. In the last fifteen minutes, add about 2-3dl of white wine.
Once it's done, you serve it with bread, preferably freshly baked. No dumplings, no potatoes, no salads, no pasta, no nonsense, just bread. Any leftovers can be put in the deep freeze, and they come out still tasting great when you take them out.
It's nothing special, but it's a little taste of home.
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Originally Posted by jdd2035
