Super easy chorizo stew

I am supposed to be thinking about a talk I agreed to do about technical interviewing for a Girls in Tech event, so of course I decided it is the perfect evening to write a blog post about the amazing chorizo stew I just made. I'm pretty sure that's how you're supposed to do procrastination.

Here's the recipe. Making it will probably take you less time and effort than reading this.

It's loosely based on this Jamie Oliver chorizo stew, except we also had some carrots and I doubled it a bit as I wanted leftovers. Like so:

Ingredients

• 560g chorizo (Or as much/little as you like, but let's be honest it's the best bit)
• 4x red onions (this was not nearly enough, you should try it with more)
• As much garlic as you like (I had roasted garlic leftover from roast dinner, I used about five cloves, it was amazing).
• 2x tinned tomatoes
• 1x ^^ those tins refilled with water to make it like nice tomatoey water instead of just plain old boring water
• 1x 200g carton passata
• 1x tinned giant butterbeans
• 250g baby carrots. These weren't in the recipe so they're not doubled, it's just what I had left in the fridge.
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon chipotle powder

Serves about eight, or as I call it: dinner for two + three midweek easy frozen meals.

Recipe

1. Fry meat, onions & garlic for 5 minutes.
   I didn't fry the chorizo enough to start with, and I was sad when we were eating it. It should have had that vaguely crunchiness to its edges, instead it was perfectly nice but you could tell it had just simmered in tomatoes and not been fried up nice in olive oil. It was because I had way too much stuff in the pan so next time I would do this bit in batches - two or three piles of meat, onion & garlic together and then combine them all after. At this point I realised I didn't have enough room to do enough onions either, and I was sad AGAIN while we were eating it. Seriously, add more onions if you make this!

2. Add everything else.
   Including the leftover carrots from the packet that we didn't cook yesterday, chopped into roughly the same size as the chorizo. I know the original recipe doesn't call for them but a friend did chorizo stew with carrots (and potatoes, more on that later) and it was ace, so here goes.

3. Cover & simmer for 20 minutes.
   Optional - and I did do this - uncover for the last five minutes for thickening. The passata makes it extra tomatoey - you might want to replace with water if you don't care for tomatoes so much. Though if you don't care for tomatoes this probably isn't the stew for you. The carrots came out nicely crunchy (but not too much) - pretty much exactly right for me. So if you prefer softer veg, cook it a bit longer.

4. Go and wash up some of the easy bits (knives, chopping boards) while this is simmering. Leave the hard stuff for later. Have a glass of wine.

5. Eat and bask in the glory of your loved one admiring your culinary talents (and make them do the rest of the washing up). This is basically exactly what happened to me after making this, so I'm quite confident this is how this bit will work out for you too.

Notes

1. I doubled the Jamie Oliver recipe because I wanted leftovers of this, except: I WAY over-doubled the chorizo (because it's the best bit) and I only left in the one can of butter beans (eagle eyes will have noticed the original undoubled recipe only called for one - I only kept it at one because I'm not mad keen on them). I used 2x 280g Brindisa cooking chorizo. So quite a lot of chorizo - depending on your preferred meat:veg ratio you may not want as much. Or you might want more! I used one mild and one hot kind, as I've made this stew before with just mild, and I'm trying to enjoy more different kinds of spicy things, though I am not very good at it yet. By the time it was seasoned I couldn't even tell which was which, but I don't know how spicy their hot one is, so who knows. This plus the paprika plus the chipotle was just on the palatable side of heat & warmth for me, any more and I would have been drinking a lot of milk which I HATE so I try not to over-spice stuff. For a side if it was too hot, sour cream, yoghurt or that amazing minty stuff that comes with the poppadoms for an Indian takeaway would have done too.

2. I used fancy Borough Market smoked paprika because it was a birthday gift (for Zac! Ha! But it's in my kitchen now!) that we should use up anyway, and it is really nice. And in the same pack was the chipotle, and I thought they would sort of go together, and they do.

3. The original recipe doesn't specify chopped, whole or some other kind of tinned tomatoes, or even that they are plum tomatoes, but that's what I had, and I also wasn't paying attention when I took them out of the cupboard so I had one tin of each chopped and not-chopped. I squished up the not-chopped ones in the pan a bit. Probably didn't need to.

I also wanted to add in leftover roast chicken & potatoes from Sunday roast yesterday, but I tasted what I had at the half way point and it was actually nice so I didn't want to mess it up! (Messing up happens relatively often when I am cooking. We've only had to order takeout instead once, though).

So we had the (sort of) original and still the best tonight, and I've added the leftover chicken and potatoes and more tomatoes and simmered it for another twenty minutes, and we'll be eating that tomorrow and hoping it is ok.

It's quite rare that I make something that comes out good with a minimum of Monday night effort, so I wanted to both reliably enjoy my meal and document it for future generations! Zac tried a potato with the sauce left on a bowl, and pronounced it 'suitably patatas-bravas-like' so I think we are onto something. Hopefully I will be able to report back after trying it that the next version was good too.