Herby pork and bean stew
A delicious, family-friendly stew, perfect for feeding a crowd and easy to pre-prepare
15 mins
1 hour 10 mins
340 kcals
serves 6
HERBY PORK AND BEAN STEW
Some friends hosted us for a gorgeous lunch on New Years’ Day, and cooked this absolutely beautiful pork dish. The recipe was an Ottolenghi one from the Guardian (you can find the original here). It’s a fantastic recipe, but for me, it’s more work than I would do for anything other than a very special occasion, as it involves roasting a whole shoulder of pork before making the casserole.
I decided that I would like to make something similar, but that is much more of an accessible recipe for day-to-day. The kids absolutely loved this, so it makes a great family meal, a brilliant Sunday roast alternative and an ideal meal to cook in bulk to feed a big group, or just to have some portions for the freezer.
I’ve become more and more conscious of using meat more mindfully- I love eating meat, but I also want to make sure it’s good quality, ethically produced and that I am not over-consuming. I therefore kept the amount of meat in this fairly light, and it is bulked out with filling and protein-rich cannellini beans. The main vegetables in this version are carrots, but butternut squash and sweet potatoes would also work well in this if you want to increase the vegetable content.
I actually used wild boar steaks in this version, because I won an amazing hamper of game meat just after Christmas, so I have the most incredible freezer stash at the moment! Regular free-range pork steaks would of course work perfectly well, although if you are looking for a wild boar recipe I definitely recommend this one!
I served this up with seasonal veg- baby new potatoes, runner beans and asparagus.
Looking for more pork recipes? Why not pop over and have a peek at these:
Slow-cooker Chinese pulled pork
Chinese char siu pork (bbq pork)
Herby pork and bean stew
Ingredients
- 500 g pork loin steaks fat removed, or 1 pork fillet (approx 400-500g), chopped up into smallish chunks
- 2 onions finely chopped
- 4 cloves garlic finely chopped
- 3 large carrots diced into chunks about 1cm across
- 1 tbsp smoked paprika
- 1/2 tbsp cumin
- 700 ml chicken stock
- 4 sprigs fresh rosemary
- 4 bay leaves
- 3 tins cannellini beans drained
- for the herb paste: 10g mint 10g tarragon, 20g parsley, zest of 1 orange, 1 clove garlic
- salt & pepper
- low calorie cooking spray/spray oil
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 160c
- In a large, oven-friendly casserole dish with a lid, spray the bottom with low calorie cooking spray or spray oil, and fry the onion gently for 5 minutes
- Pop the chopped pork in, and keep frying on a gentle heat. Add in the chopped garlic.
- Stir through the carrot, smoked paprika and cumin
- Pour in the chicken stock, bring up to a simmer, and add in the rosemary and bay leaves.
- Pour in the chicken stock, bring up to a simmer, and add in the rosemary and bay leaves.
- Add in the drained cannellini beans, season with salt and pepper and give everything a good stir.
- Cover with the lid, and oven-bake for 1 hour.
- While this is cooking, prepare the herb paste. If you have a mini chopper, then blend together the mint, tarragon, parsley, orange zest and garlic. If you don’t have a mini chopper, then just chope it all as finely as you can by hand.
- Once your casserole has been cooking for an hour, bring it back up onto the heat on top of the stove and bring to a fast simmer. Fish out the bay leaves and rosemary stalks (to discard) and stir through the herb paste.
- Serve.
