Irish Stew and No-knead Dinner Rolls

I hit two home runs for dinner tonight! Irish Stew and No-Knead Dinner Rolls :) The Irish Stew was a very simple crockpot recipe in my old Betty Crocker cookbook. I bought two pounds of local lamb stew meat last week, and I browned it (I used a little bacon fat to get it going, but after that it rendered quite a bit of fat out of the lamb). I browned it in the skillet, because my only dutch oven is a campfire oven, so it has legs, which makes it difficult to use on the stovetop. As I finished browing each batch I moved them to the dutch oven. While the next batch browned I chopped onions, carrots and potatoes and layered those on top of the meat. Repeat for three batches. Sprinkle some of my freshly dried thyme on top, deglaze the browning skillet with canned beef broth and pour all those lovely browned bits into the dutch oven, lid on, and parked it in a 300 degree oven for two hours. Then we turned it down to warm and left it for another three hours. At the very end I made a quick roux on the stovetop and stirred it in to thicken it up. Dave said it was a winner. The meat was just falling apart, and the veg was still in big chunks, but quite soft. Delicious!

The No-Knead Dinner Rolls was a recipe a friend recommended. It took about an hour and a half of rising time, but it was worth it. Delicious, fluffy rolls, a perfect companion to sop up the Irish Stew from the bottom of the bowl.

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