Stewing in the Big Green Egg

Tasty stews in the Big Green Egg

Each country has its own traditional stewed dishes. Stews such as French coq au vin, Hungarian goulash, Italian ossobuco and German sauerbraten are famous all over the world. But there are also many other stewed dishes that are only known in their own region. There is one sure thing about all recipes for stew – they taste even better when cooked in the Big Green Egg!

Stewing is a cooking technique whereby you allow the ingredients to cook slowly at a low temperature in a liquid such as fond, stock or wine. You usually brown the meat, fish or vegetables before adding the cooking liquid. You can do this in a pan, but if you are going to make a stew with your Big Green Egg, your ingredients will taste even better when you start by grilling them on a cast iron grid. It is a very healthy cooking technique: the vitamins and minerals are retained because you do not pour off the cooking juices at the end. Furthermore, it is a very easy process and there’s not much that can go wrong with a stew. Thanks to the liquid and the low cooking temperature, there isn’t much chance of burning the dish and it usually doesn’t matter if you let it stew for fifteen minutes more or less.

 

Tender and juicy

When stewing meat, the lengthy cooking process ensures that any tough bits with a lot of connective tissue will become as tender as can be. The collagen in the connective tissue of the stew meat will melt, improving the structure of the meat. Stewing also makes hard, high-fibre vegetables and firmer types of fish juicier and more tender. An extra advantage of the slow cooking process is that the flavours of the ingredients have time to blend with each other. The flavours of the cooking liquid, the herbs and other flavour enhancers are absorbed by the vegetables and the meat or fish which, in turn, give the liquid extra flavour.

Optimal heat distribution

Use the Green Dutch Oven  or the Cast Iron Dutch Oven  for cooking stews in the Big Green Egg. Ensure optimal heat distribution by putting the convEGGtor  and the stainless steel grid in place first and then set the pan on top. The cast iron of the Dutch oven will absorb the heat and transfer it through the stew evenly. You do not put the lid on the Dutch oven when you are making stew in the Big Green Egg. If the dish you are stewing takes a very long time, you can put the lid of the Dutch oven on the pan for part of the cooking time to prevent moisture from escaping during the cooking process. Remove the lid from the Dutch oven about 15-30 minutes after the start or before the end of the cooking time. Because you really want your stew to have that wonderful Big Green Egg flavour!