Winter Warmer

Rachel, ,

I don’t know about where you live, but its been bloomin’ freezing here. I’m permanently in thermal long johns and thick socks and the first thing I do when I get home aof an evening is to put the kettle on and make a hot drink and hot water bottle! The coldest night was Wednesday where it went down to -4.5c. No snow where I live though (thankfully)

A few pics I’ve taken recently on walks and in my garden.

So, apart from snuggly clothes, blankets and hot drinks, one of my go to winter warmers is a good stew.

My chap is a long time vegetarian and making stew and casseroles can be difficult to do well

However, there is a wonderful online resource that I go to time and time again for good veggie recipes is BBC Good Food. The below recipe was one I came across a couple of years back and I made it last night. Its a great, cheap recipe and full of winter root veggies.

It’s really filing and the herbiness and cheesiness make it so tasty, filling and very warming. It;s also really easy to make. Its not a quick recipe but I stuck an audiobook on for company and it was a great way to spend some time on a cold day instead of on the sofa.

In case you’re interested, I listened to the entire audiobook of The Snowman as read by (surprise surprise !) Richard Armitage. It’s a really sweet book and I loved how British it was with talk of Jim jams, etc

So here’s the link to the recipe

Basically you brown some whole shallots, chop winter veggies into big chunks. Then add white wine and reduced to half, then add pearl barley and 1 litre veggie stock and some thyme and parsley. Cook for 45 mins. Whilst that’s stewing you make the herby dumplings. Then dot the dumplings on top of the cooked stew and oven cook for 25 mins til the dumplings have browned.

Do you have any go to winter warmer recipes?

Published by Rachel

Crazy cat and Armitage lady

38 Comments

  1. That stew looks delicious! I am not vegetarian, but I love and cook a lot of vegetarian dishes. My favourite winter dishes are thick soups, made with whatever vegetables I have at hand. Sometimes vegetarian, sometimes with chicken. Stay warm! ā¤ļøšŸ¤—

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  2. Your dinner looks very good. I’m a meat eater but I like veggie soups. One of my faves is carrot and red lentils with little ginger, cook them well and then mush.

    We are having cold weather atm, now it’s on -13C degrees and getting colder.

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    1. gosh i couldn’t imagine -13! the lowest I’ve experienced in UK was -7c!
      when my chap was away last week I made myself a lovely meaty chili that lasted me 3 night!
      I have a good red lentil soup recipe, i keep meaning to make it , so that’s a good reminder šŸ™‚

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      1. I also cook veggie casseroles, it’s easy to add some mince meat sauce (bologna) or chicken on them if you like.

        We are getting even more cold here, next week should go down to -20. Worst part is to dress and undress all the time.

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  3. My mum would make a meat based stew similar with dumplings which was my dads favorite meal she cooked!
    Iā€™m not vegetarian either but I like trying non meat entrees. I adore pasta too much to go vegan. And cheese of course stick an IV in me with Bree, Muenster, Swiss, Mozarella, feta, Havarti ., what am I missing?
    Youā€™re making me very hungry ā¤ļøā¤ļøā¤ļø
    The Robin on the branch is precious

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    1. yeah the robin is a friendly chap, greets me everytime I put seed out.
      i def couldn’t become vegan, no way could i give up cheese!
      I don’t think we had dumplings when I was a kid

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      4. She made goulash with dumplings too or spatzle which is a German noodle
        She would never tell me what dinner was if it was something I didnā€™t like ie ham or duck or liver and onions.
        We have robins at work. Iā€™ll send you the pic ā¤ļøšŸ˜Š

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      2. Here are my winter recipes:
        – soups of all kinds
        – potatoes cooked in water, crushed then served with salad cut into thin strips and vinaigrette.
        – celery puree with, potatoes, crĆØme fraĆ®che, grated gruyere cheese, fresh egg broken in the middle, all passed in the oven
        – endives with ham (grated gruyere or white sauce: melted butter, flour, milk)
        – Cod brandade
        – cauliflower, potato, hard-boiled eggs and white sauce
        …

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      5. Quiche = pie or Gratin with spinach, leek or broccoli
        Gratin dauphinois (potatoes)
        blueberries, artichoke carrots to proter the liver

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  6. Your stew and dumplings looks like a perfect sturdy winter-warmer. I love BBC Good Food, you can rely on them to have a recipe and they are consistently good. I like thick soups in the winter, lentil, tomato and ginger or chilli-bean with a baked potato floating in the middle.

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    1. ooh ginger is a warnmer
      yeah i love BBC Good Food, it’s so easily searchable for what ingredients you may want to use and the reviews and comments help make it easier to decide if it’s a recipe worth trying

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  7. Oh yes, this is the season for stews and curries. Where I come from in the NOrth of Germany, we have a traditional dish that I can never get enough of. It is called ā€œKohl und Pinkelā€ (which translates into an unsavoury ā€œkale and peeā€ šŸ¤£) – itā€™s boiled curly kale with served with potatoes, a meat sausage vaguely similar to haggis, pork and smoked sausages. Northern German ā€œcuisineā€ is characterised by the large amount of fat that goes into it – which makes it very tasty, but also provides the sustenance needed in a cold climate. In order to stomach it, it is traditionally accompanied by a high-percentage shot prior, during and after the meal. Unfortunately its availability is very much regionally limited to the area where I come from, so I canā€™t really cook it here in my exile. My mother every year sends me a parcel with the ingredients, though. This year we are having problems, though – the German postal services are currently not accepting any parcels to Britain and Ireland. Not sure whether that is due to the new Covid variation or Brexit, but yeah, it really sucks. – I had kale in this weekā€™s organic veggie box, though, so I might try and recreate it with the ingredients I have at my disposal here.

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  8. That stew looks delicious! If only I enjoyed cooking… šŸ˜‰
    It’s been chilly here but not really cold yet. We always want the cold here because then the canals will freeze and everyone goes skating, but alas it never seems to get cold enough for long enough these past few years

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    1. i enjoy cooking, because it stops me from just sitting on my bum! lol
      have the canals frozen during your lifetime? i mean, i know the Thames used to freeze but that was back in Victorian times!

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      1. Yes, when the kids were smaller we had a few quite cold winters in a row and Mr Esther taught the kids how to skate on the frozen water here. I mean, it was never cold very long, maybe a week here and a few days there but long enough for canals to occaisionally freeze. Last winter, or the winter before, we had one or two days where the ice was thick enough to skate on but it feels like a long time ago since we’ve had any prolonged cold spell, maybe 10 years?

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