When the summer is hot the cooking should be easy. Particularly if you have school going children, the summer is also about relaxing the routines and settling in to a looser and more informal lifestyle for a few weeks. While some people have the luxury of blending seamlessly into the summer regime, for others who work outside the home, rather than being more relaxed and unstructured, it becomes chaotic and exhausting. The lack of routine can throw people off and thinking of new meals on top of all the other life stress can be the straw that breaks the overworked camel’s sweaty back.
Summer is a time to celebrate an abundance of fresh ingredients. If you do grow your own I have no doubt that sitting in the garden these days amongst the herbs and the vegetables is pure joy to the olfactory senses as the those wonderful wafting fresh scents perfume the air. Let’s be honest, this is not a time to be slaving over a hot stove in the kitchen. If you have been working indoors all day, the last thing you want to do on a sunny summer’s evening is confine yourself to a kitchen.
The summer one pot is the answer on the days that you don’t want to fire up the barbeque. We tend to think of ‘one pot dishes’ as the preserve of colder months; those hearty beef stews and warming chicken casseroles tend to dominate when we consider using Dutch ovens or slow cookers. Both of these tools can still be put to good use in the summer. Indeed it’s certainly worth mentioning that slow cookers are great in the summer as those long hours of slow cooking at lower temperatures tend not to overheat the kitchen.
So let’s talk slow cookers first. If you have one then let it help you to enjoy more of the good weather. Naturally slow cookers call for a little more forward planning, but the effort expended in advance, buys you precious time in the garden or with the family on bright evenings. You can also prepare several meals ahead, without cooking and freeze them ready to dump into the slow cooker before you go to work. When you arrive home eight hours later, the dinner is magically ready. A lovely customer at James Whelan Butchers, who is originally from the US, gave me this idea of preparing meals and freezing them in Ziploc bags ahead of cooking. Apparently it is very common in the States to prepare a month’s worth of uncooked meals in one afternoon and lob them into the freezer. Effectively all you are really doing is chopping and bagging; the cooking is done later. If you are this organised it means you can take full advantage of special offers when they come up. I was intrigued by the suggestion and had a root around the web and to my amazement found that it is indeed a common practice. Although extreme in my mind, there was one blog entry where a lady claimed to have prepared 40 ‘crock pot freezer meals’ and cleaned the entire kitchen in just four hours! I instantly looked for the Superwoman logo, but there wasn’t one. Google it the next time you are online and just wait for the acres of ideas and information that pops up.
If you don’t have a slow cooker, there are plenty of fast and slow one pots out there for the summer. If you think about it curries originated in a particularly hot climate and all they really are is an Asian one pot. The same would have to be said of the popularity of tagines in North Africa; effectively a local one pot from another hot climate. Or how about a Spanish paella; rice, meat, seafood and vegetables with saffron all cooked together in one great big pan.
I love to do my own version of a Spanish rice and seafood dish. I simply fry chopped onions, a red and green pepper, some chorizo sausage and two or three crushed garlic cloves in a little olive oil for a few minutes. I then add about 250 grams of uncooked rice, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a pint of boiling water from the kettle, cover it and allow it to cook until the rice is almost done. I then stir in my prawns and add some fresh herbs or spices and allow the rice to finish cooking and everything to heat through. You can really make this dish your own by adding various things herbs and spices into the mix. The best thing is bringing the entire pan to the table and allowing everyone to dig in.
For a Moroccan inspired chicken dish heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan and fry chopped chicken breast or chopped chicken thighs. Add a chopped onion and grated fresh ginger and allow it all to cook for 2 minutes. Then add 150 mls of cold water, a pinch of saffron, a pinch of turmeric, a tablespoon of honey and some sliced carrots. Put a lid on the pot and allow the dish to simmer for about 30 minutes. At the end of the cooking remove the lid and increase the heat for about 5 minutes just to allow the sauce to reduce and thicken. You could serve this with cous cous, rice or some new potatoes if you wanted to.
Don’t confine your cast iron pots to the back of the cupboard for the summer. Dig them out and let them help you enjoy the supposedly lazy summer days while keeping the family fed on good, wholesome, home cooked food.
This post was written by me, Pat Whelan, owner of James Whelan Butchers and a passionate advocate of local artisan food. My family have been producing quality Irish Angus beef for generations using a traditional dry aging process. This tradition is one that I continue to practice at our abattoir on our family farm in Garrentemple, Clonmel. These posts aim to impart some of the wisdom to readers and help them get the best out of the meat they eat! Our meat is available online here! I welcome your feedback to [email protected]
We hope you enjoyed reading this post by Pat Whelan of James Whelan Butchers. Pat is a 5th generation butcher, cook book author and the director of James Whelan Butchers with shops in Clonmel, the Avoca Handweavers Rathcoole and Kilmacanogue, Dunnes Stores Cornelscourt, Rathmines and Swords in Dublin. Sign up to our newsletter for more updates from James Whelan Butchers
Tags: James Whelan Butchers, Pat Whelan, slow cooking, summer one pot cooking
