lamb, sweet carrots and celery and onions and then a beautiful, buttery potato topping.

This is a Skehan family Irish stew and it's a classic recipe in my house. It's so good

and it is beautiful for Paddy's day but also all year round. Great comfort food. Heat a

large casserole pot over a high heat and add in a good drop of rapeseed oil. I'm using

shoulder of lamb here because when you tenderly braise it you get this beautiful melt in

the mouth meat. But you wanna make sure you do it in batches so that you get a good colour

on all sides of the lamb. Season with a pinch of salt and pepper.

This has to be one of the best parts of making Irish stew. As soon as you start searing that

meat on the base of that casserole, the smells in the kitchen just start erupting from the

pan and it gets all around the house. And what you are doing here is getting all these

wonderful little brown bits at the bottom of the pan and that's where the flavour is

gonna come from for your Irish stew. So good.

The great thing about an Irish stew is that

it doesn't take too many ingredients. You've got onion, carrot, celery and potatoes. Four

very, very simple ingredients, and a bay leaf and a few other things but it is really

easy to make. Chop up some celery, some carrots and roughly chop two onions. Now these three

classic ingredients; you've got onions, you've got carrots and you've got celery, they're

gonna make a wonderful base. You've got sweetness from the onions and the carrot and then a

slight bitterness from the celery but it's gonna create wonderful base flavours for a

stew like this.

Fry the veggies until just tender and season

with a little bit of sea salt and black pepper. While the veggies are becoming nice and tender

and soaking up all those lovely lamb juices, my Irish stew has a little bit of a twist

in the fact that I don't put the potatoes in the stew and I layer them on top in nice

slices, with lots of butter and salt and pepper. It's absolutely delicious.

Add the meat back into the pan and give it all a good mix through.

Add in some good quality beef stock and a bay leaf.

I've got all the ingredients in the pot ready to rock for my Irish stew so

now we need to talk potatoes. I'm just going to layer them over the top in a nice kind

of even pattern. You don't have to worry about it looking too pretty but just get them just ever

so slightly layering. I think this looks great because when it goes into the oven and it

cooks down with a little bit of butter on top, it is really beautiful and golden and

just the way you want an Irish stew to be.

Give it a last seasoning of salt and pepper.

Lid goes on and this is now going to cook for an hour and a half at 160° Celsius until

it's really nice and tender.

Check this out. I've taken the lid off during

the cooking time so it allows the liquid to reduce a little bit and it also allows for

that potato top to get nice and crispy. But look at this! The smell! That is the smell

of my childhood! I want you to give it a go because it is so simple, a great way to celebrate

St. Patrick's Day but also a great comfort food dinner throughout the year. If you want

to check out the recipe it's in the box below. Here you can also subscribe and I want you

to leave me lots of comments. So for now, we'll say goodbye.