Irish Stew and Boston Cream Pie

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Being Irish, at least in part, somewhere along the way to get an Irish family name, I like trying to make Irish food for St. Patrick's Day. Honestly, corned beef hash is gross. I just could not eat it last year. So this year I did a little more research and found that Irish stew is basically what I've been making as stew for years. Then I just had to make a dessert, something I like but have never made before Boston Cream Pie.

So for the stew you need beef stew meat (if you're like me and just can't do lamb) potatoes, carrots, onions, parsley and thyme and parsnips.

Those white carrot looking things, those are parsnips and before my research into Irish food I had seriously never thought to try them. But you know what? They are white carrots, look like them and actually taste more carroty. Why has this been such a secret?

So roughly 3 hours later.... we get stew.

Too bad I didn't like it. Heh. I really should have stuck to my normal stew making method and just thrown in some of the parsnips. I followed an online recipe thinking "It's a well respected site, I've made their stuff before and it was good, I'll try it this way."

I should have known one and a half hours was not long enough to soften that stew meat and being in the pot all together the potatoes would be mush and guess what? I was right. Plus I really don't like that much thyme.

On to the Boston Cream Pie....

Crock Pot Stroganoff

So I found this recipe some time ago and have altered it a bit and now it's an easy dinner to keep everything on hand for.

What you need: bag of egg noodles ( I only use about half the bag per meal), one cup of sour cream, McCormick's Hearty Beef Stew Slow Cooker mix (yup they have a stroganoff version but it just don't taste right), and some stew meat.

For the stew meat I like to go with the larger chunks since in our store we have a choice between 1 inch or so size pieces and really little pieces that would probably be great for something that doesn't cook so long. They also have 2 different size packages one about a pound and a half and the other roughly 3 lbs, I go with the smaller, we just don't need 3 lbs of meat for 5 people.

The original recipe called for some diced onion (that I could never taste so I just started leaving out) and sliced mushroom which I just cannot eat cooked mushrooms, um no.

I usually start this about 1 in the afternoon while I'm fixing me some lunch before I go get in line to pick the kids up from school.

Just dump the stew meat into your trusty slow cooker/crock pot whatever, and make sure to break it up a little after being all squished together in the package.


Grab a measuring cup and fill with about 1 and a half cups water or beef broth, the broth doesn't add anything that I've noticed but hey it doesn't hurt, mix in your hearty beef stew mix and pour over the meat.

Now get about another half cup of water to get the rest of the mix out of the mesuring cup, no matter what I do I can never get it to all come out at once.

Stir everything around good and crank the cooker up to high, put the lid on and walk away.

Come back about 4 hours later and this is what you'll see. Carefully give it a stir, I say carefully because well the meat just falls to pieces.

Now you need to boil the water for the noodles, they may only take 5 minutes to cook but it seems to take 30 minutes to boil enough water for them.

We now add the sour cream, I only buy those little 1 cup containers when they're on sale for cheaper than the big ones and this just hasn't happened recently, so out comes the little 1/4 cup and I get to make a mess with the sour cream, drop a cup into the meat.

Which will then look like this. Give it a stir and....

Guess what... You're done. Yup that's all there is left to that, now for those noodles whose water finally decided to boil.

My package says 6-7 minutes til done, I say I get soggy noodles after that long then mixing with that really tasty sauce up there, so I go for about 5 minutes cooking time, then drain, duh.


Now here's where things can be debated, some people want the sauce poured over the noodles, not all mixed together. I say when you cook it you can serve it however you like.

I just find it easier to serve and to put away the leftovers when it's all mixed up. This seems to make about 6 good servings, we always have leftovers when it's just the 5 of us eating, but it would be easy enough to double the sauce recipe to use the whole bag of egg noodles to serve roughly 10 adults.