I recently made a pork stew at home, and it came out incredible. The recipe below serves about 4-6 portions, depending on how hungry you are. I usually cook stews like this on cold days, and serve them up in a bowl with something equally heavy and rich, like creamy mashed potatoes.
Pork Stew
I recently made a pork stew at home, and it came out incredible. The recipe below serves about 4-6 portions, depending on how hungry you are. I usually cook stews like this on cold days, and serve them up in a bowl with something equally heavy and rich, like creamy mashed potatoes.
Ingredients
- 24-32 oz pork shoulder, (cut into large 1.5” cubes)
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- 3 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 6 oz red wine
- 6 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 large white onion, ( large dice)
- 2 stalks celery, (small dice)
- 2 carrots, (cut into large bite-sized chunks)
- 4 oz tomato puree
- 40 oz pork or chicken broth
- 6 sprigs thyme
- 2 sprigs rosemary
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 2 tsp red pepper flakes
- Kosher salt & freshly-ground black pepper, ( to taste)
- 2 cups, or 2 medium-sized Yukon gold potatoes, (cut into bite-sized chunks)
- 4 oz bacon, (cut into ¼” thick lardons)
- 3 Tbsp olive oil
- 16 oz white or Bella mushrooms, (stem removed and cut into quarters)
- 8 oz pearl onions, (peeled and kept whole)
- 3 Tbsp cornstarch
- 3 Tbsp cold water
- ¼ cup fresh parsley, stirred into stew at the end, and also used fresh as garnish
Instructions
- Remove any overly thick sections of visible fat from the pork shoulder, if there is too much fat.
- Cut remaining pork shoulder into large 1.5” cubes.
- *You can still leave a bit of fat on the individual cubes.
- Salt the pork shoulder cubes with kosher salt.
- Place a large saute pan over high heat and add the vegetable oil.
- Wait until the oil is nearly smoking.
- Dry your cubes quickly with paper towels and lightly brown them quickly in the very hot vegetable oil.
- Remove the lightly-browned pork from the heat, and set aside for later.
- Turn off the heat and wait 20 seconds.
- Carefully deglaze the pan by pouring 2oz of the red wine into your pan.
- Stir with a wooden spoon to remove browned bits from the bottom of the pan and incorporate them into the red wine deglazing liquid.
- Add 2 Tbsp butter and the white onion, celery, and carrots.
- Turn heat to medium and cook for 4 minutes, or until the onions begin to soften.
- Add the tomato puree and cook for an additional 10 minutes.
- Add the pork or chicken broth, the browned pork from earlier, the thyme sprigs, rosemary, dried oregano, red pepper flakes, and the remaining 4oz of red wine and bring the liquid to a simmer.
- Add the cut potatoes and taste cooking liquid.
- Adjust for salt and add freshly-ground black pepper to taste, keeping the salt level low, as you will be cooking this for a number of hours and some reduction will occur.
- Cook on low heat, covered with a lid or with aluminum foil, keeping the liquid cooking at just below a simmer.
- Cook for roughly 3-3.5 hours, or until the pork is completely fork-tender.
- While the soup is cooking, prepare your bacon lardons, quartered mushrooms, peeled pearl onions, and fresh parsley.
- Cook the lardons over medium-low heat until they are cooked but still have some chew to them.
- Remove the cooked lardons from the heat and set aside for later.
- Remove cooked mushrooms from the heat and set aside for later.
- Use the remaining 2 Tbsp of butter remaining olive oil to cook your peeled pearl onions over low heat with a lid until they are completely soft and fully cooked.
- Remove the cooked pearl onions from the heat and set aside for later.
- When your pork meat is ready, you can thicken your stew liquid by whisking in 3 Tbsp cornstarch mixed with 3 Tbsp water, if desired.
- Taste mixture and add more kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper if needed.
- Stir in half of the freshly-chopped parsley into the stew.
- Serve the stew in bowls, topped with an assortment of the cooked bacon lardons, quartered mushrooms, and whole pearl onions.
- Garnish the bowls with the remaining freshly-chopped parsley.
- Serve hot, and enjoy!
Notes
This stew tastes great reheated over the next few days.