Cooking shocker with Jonny69 - Kidney in lamb stew

[Jonny69]

Tonight's dinner is lamb stew in which I tried to add a little extra. A few weeks ago I did a Lancashire hotpot and made it with about 1/3 lamb liver with the lamb. It was absolutely fantastic and added a lot of lovely flavour to it. I actually meant to buy kidney having sampled many steak and kidney pies over the years but got liver by mistake. No worries, it was fine.

So today I tackled kidneys, I've never done kidneys before. They come frozen from the supermarket and are dead cheap, the perfect offal really... Well that's what I thought until I defrosted them. Ok it looked like there was a lot of liquid in there which I tipped down the sink and then found out that kidneys are literally like slime. They are hard to cut and there's a line of gristle inside them. No worries, that didn't put me off. Into the frying pan to brown some of them off. Oooooo there's suddenly a horrible smell of sheep and sheep piss in the kitchen, a REALLY horrible smell.

Veggie girlfriend leaves at this point.

Phonecall to mum. Help. Soak them in milk first. Half hour in milk and I have brown milky goo that smells like sheep pee, strongly of pee. Gave them a serious rinse and they start to disintegrate. Gross. Really horrible. And then threw them in the stew.

So in about half an hour I can tell you what it tastes like. The gravy tastes fantastic, if a little strong. It probably didn't need anywhere near as much stock as usual because of the kidney but I think it's ok.

Here's the recipe:

500g cubed lamb
Half again of lamb kidney but I strongly suggest leave that out
2 onions, sliced
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 beef stock cube, crumbled
1 large carrot, sliced
Handful of pearl barley
Handful of pasta (optional)
2 teaspoons of flour
Boiling water

Brown the meat and transfer to a large pot. Brown the onions and garlic and transfer to same pot. Add stock cube, flour, pearl barley and carrot, stir it all together and cover it with boiling water. Add plenty of pepper, but not too much salt because the stock cube is quite salty. Bung on a lid and pop it in a 180 degree oven for 2 hours or more. About 30 minutes before you want to serve throw in the pasta if you like pasta in your stew.

Serve up with crispy roasties