Meat and potato stew is the ultimate comfort food for a weeknight!
Almost every country in the world has its version of a comforting stew. For France, it's the Beef Bourguignon and the Coq au Vin, for Singapore, it's Chicken Curry and for Japan, it's Niku Jaga!
The tender meat just goes really well with carrots, onions and potatoes and since it's simmered in the quintessential Japanese stock base of dashi, mirin, soy and sake, you know it is going to taste heavenly!
The beauty about this dish is that you can either use beef, pork or chicken. In this version, I'm using pork belly cuts.
Ingredients:
(serves 2-3)
250g pork, cut into cubes
1 carrot
1 medium onion
2 potatoes
10-12 snow peas
1 tsp dashi powder, dissolved in 1.5 cup of warm water
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp sake
Dash of sugar
Minced ginger
Directions:
Prepare the vegetables by cutting into chunks.
Parboil the pork belly to remove the porky smell. Remove and throw away the water
In a large pan, stirfry the onions till fragrant in 2 tbsp oil, then add the minced ginger, carrots and potatoes.
Stir around a bit, then add the pork cubes.
Add 1 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp each of mirin and sake, a dash of sugar and 1 tbsp of dashi powder dissolved in around 1.5cup of water. Bring to a boil. Turn down the heat.
Before closing the lid to simmer, place a few sheets of oil filter paper on top of the stew. This is to prevent too much of the gravy juices from evaporating when you simmer it. Close the lid and simmer for 20 minutes at low heat.
After 20 minutes, remove the filter paper. Add the snow peas on top. Instead of shirataki I am using softened potato noodles. Place these noodles in the pan as well. Simmer for another 5 minutes till the noodles have soaked up the juices.
The tender meat, savoury potatoes and carrots go so well with warm white rice and it gets even better when you reheat it overnight. YUM!!!!
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