The weather here in London is turning towards autumn after a summer that we hardly noticed. It’s time for some easy to cook comfort food. One of our family favourites is slow cooked lamb with prunes and pearl barley. It’s a classic one pot meal – well it’s two unless your slow cooker has a sauté function. Put it on in the morning and it’s perfect for dinner plus leftovers.

I have an amazing slow cooker that will brown and also make the sauce. If yours doesn’t have that function then make the sauce separately in a deep fry pan and add to the lamb in the slow cooker.

I use lamb shanks then strip the meat off them. It will also work well with a lamb shoulder or lamb neck. The recipe is for 6 lamb shanks, a generous two kilos with the weight of the bone or approximately 1 kilos if just using stewing lamb chunks. Ginger, saffron and the sweetness of the prunes gives this dish a Middle Eastern vibe. Adding the pearl barley a couple of hours before the end allows the barley to soak up all the juices. The recipe feeds 8 people with leftovers.

Recipe

Ingredients

6 lamb shanks

300 grams prunes

4 large shallots or an onion, chopped very fine

2 carrots, chopped very fine

45 mls (3 tablespoons olive oil)

Pat of butter

250 mls dry white wine

30 grams minced ginger (I use the jarred stuff for ease)

2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 teaspoons cumin

2 teaspoons ground coriander

1/4 teaspoon saffron threads

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 litre (4 cups) lamb stock or chicken stock

250 grams of pearl barley or long grain rice.

Preparation

1. Put the saffron in a small amount of hot water. Sauté the onions, carrots and ginger in the olive oil with butter, until well softened. Add the white wine, cook at high temperature until all the alcohol in the wine has evaporated. Add the spices including the saffron and its liquid. Add the stock and bring to a simmer.
2. Pit the prunes and rough chop into halves. Put the lamb and the prunes in the slow cooker. If lamb shanks, stand them upright in the slow cooker with the bone ends up. Pour the sauce over the lamb. Cook on a low setting for six hours. Add the pearl barley or the rice about two hours before the cooking time is up. The barley will absorb most of the cooking liquid. Remove the lamb, bone it and return it to the slow cooker.
3. Allow the stew to cool for 20 to 30 minutes. You could add some mashed potatoes or Yorkshire puddings but I usually serve with a green salad or cooked green beans and a nice côte du Rhone.

Thanks for reading the blog, sharing, cooking the recipes and your comments.

Roast leg of lamb has been an Easter tradition for longer than there’s been Easter. The tradition of lamb as a celebratory meal is as old as Passover. The Jews in captivity in Egypt marked the doorposts with the blood of a first born lamb so that the plague of the first born ‘passed over’ their houses. But it’s also a practical tradition, particularly in the northern hemisphere when lamb is readily available in the spring.

A fun fact about lamb – it’s the only meat (excluding poultry) that’s not banned by a major religion. And Americans eat much less lamb than Europeans. Several historical reasons for this: the rise of cattle ranching in America (sheep make pasture unsuitable for cattle for months) and the presence of more predators. Remember, Europe has been largely settled and agrarian for much longer.

Leg of lamb is nice but the first time I put a lamb shoulder in my slow cooker – I was a convert. I’m a big fan of slow cooking and making a stew that can be frozen in batches makes more sense this year when it’s just two of us. I have a CrockPot slow cooker that sautés as well as slow cooks. It makes this a genuine one pot dish. You can also make the sauce in deep frying pan on the stove.

There are a couple of variations to ‘finish off’ the stew. I prefer adding pearl barley towards the end of cooking – it takes care of the carbs and the pearl barley freezes well. You can also thicken the stew with either cornstarch or beurre manie, as you prefer.

Let’s cook.

Ingredients

Lamb shoulder, 2 to 4 pounds, jointed so that it fits in your slow cooker

20 pitted prunes

Mild olive oil for sautéing

1 clove of garlic minced fine (optional)

Salt and pepper

1 chopped onion

2 chopped carrots

1 tablespoon minced ginger (I buy mine in jars, can’t be bothered to keep fresh ginger in the house)

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

300 mls red wine (I like Beaujolais or a young Burgundy)

300 mls lamb stock or chicken stock if you can’t get lamb

200 grams or 1 cup of dried pearl barley (if using)

Instructions

1. Heat up the slow cooker.
2. Make the sauce, either in the slow cooker or in a deep fry pan on the stove. Heat olive oil, add onion, carrots, garlic, ginger, cinnamon and a twist of salt and pepper. Cook until the onion is translucent.
3. Add the wine, increase the heat and burn off the alcohol. Add the stock and bring to a boil.
4. Combine sauce, lamb and prunes in the slow cooker. I cook this for 6 hours on high in total but you’ll know how your slow cooker works.
5. About 90 minutes before the stew is done add the pearl barley, make sure it’s submerged in the sauce.
6. When complete, gently remove the lamb from the slow cooker, it will be falling off the bone. Allow it to cool until you can handle it, then shred it – use two forks to pull it off the bone. Return the meat to the sauce and it’s ready to serve.
7. If you haven’t used the pearl barley, the sauce will be thin. You can thicken as normal with corn flour (cornstarch to Americans). Here’s a link to BBC Good Food. Or you can beurre manié. Here’s a good description of how it works.

I serve this with some roast vegetables on the side. If you haven’t added the pearl barley, combine with your carbs of choice; mashed potatoes, rice or couscous.

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