It’s cold here and definitely a good time for stews and hearty meals. One of my favourite stews is my mother’s hotch potch, pictured.
There is no set recipe for this - it’s about using what you have. In rough terms, to a large casserole dish, I added 500g cubed chuck steak that had been tossed in a mixture of salt and plain flour (I did this in a freezer bag for easy clean up), 500g peeled and chopped potatoes, and whatever other veg you have to hand (I used carrots and beans, but mixed frozen veg works a treat). Take a generous heaped metal tablespoon (the big spoon not a baking measure) full of plain flour and mix it with just enough water to make a paste - put that in the casserole dish with the meat and veg, and shake in some Worcestershire sauce and tomato sauce to taste. Crumble in a beef stock cube, season with salt and pepper to taste, then add enough water to the pot to just cover the meat and veg.
Cook in a preheated 180 degree Celsius oven for around 2 hours, and that’s it.
The crucial step is using enough flour to make the sauce thicken, otherwise you end up with tasteless watery stew (which I have done a number of times).
A perfect dish served with crusty bread to soak up all of that yummy sauce.
I love the name of this stew, so fun to say and also just a really fun time thinking what might be in it! It looks delicious and I am a big stew fan, while I don't like ingredients touching, for some reason, it works with stew and mostly you can pick things out one at a time to eat them separately I guess. It all looks delicious, such a nice photo of it. And, so fun that it is your mother's recipe, I love the idea of this being a family thing for you.
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