Steamed Dumpling "Irish Stew" Shortcut
English
Chapter 5: The Modern Irish American Pantry (Trader Joe's Hacks)
A proper Irish stew is a beautiful thing, born of tough cuts, root vegetables, and idle hours. But on a Tuesday night when the rain is sideways and patience is thin, nobody has three hours to tend a simmering pot. Enter the modern pantry hack. By leaning on the quiet brilliance of pre-cooked pot roast, bite-sized potatoes, and tubbed mirepoix, you can compress an afternoon of braising into a half-hour hustle. Finished with quartered buttermilk biscuits that steam into pillowy, unforgivingly rich dumplings right on top of the broth, it is a brilliant, unpretentious collision of ancestral comfort and ruthless efficiency.
Before you start
Shred the fully cooked pot roast into bite-sized pieces.
Retain any gelatinous juices from the packaging; they are pure flavor.
Cut each raw biscuit into quarters using a sharp knife or kitchen shears.
You will end up with 32 small pieces of dough. Toss them lightly with the finely chopped parsley.
Ingredients
- olive oil or unsalted butter2 tablespoons
- Trader Joes Mirepoix1 tub 14.5 oz
- garlic3 cloves
- tomato paste2 tablespoons
- all purpose flour2 tablespoons
- Irish stout beer1/2 cup
- Trader Joes Organic Beef Broth1 carton 32 oz
- Trader Joes Fully Cooked Pot Roast1 package 16 oz
- Trader Joes Teeny Tiny Potatoes1 bag 16 oz
- fresh thyme leaves1 tablespoon
- kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepperto taste
- Trader Joes Refrigerated Buttermilk Biscuits1 tube 8 count
- fresh parsley1 tablespoon
Method
- 01
Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat and sweat the mirepoix.
Sauté until the onions are translucent and the carrots soften, about five to seven minutes.
- 02
Stir in the minced garlic and tomato paste.
Cook for one minute until the paste darkens and the kitchen smells phenomenal.
- 03
Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and stir vigorously.
Let it cook for a minute or two to kill the raw flour taste.
- 04
Pour in the stout beer to deglaze the pot.
Scrape up all the beautiful, browned bits from the bottom and let the beer reduce slightly for a minute.
- 05
Add the beef broth, whole potatoes, shredded pot roast, and thyme.
Season generously with salt and pepper, bring to a rolling boil, then drop the heat to maintain a gentle simmer.
- 06
Cover and simmer until the potatoes are easily pierced with a fork.
This should take about ten to twelve minutes.
- 07
Remove the lid and drop the quartered biscuit dough directly onto the simmering liquid.
Space them out slightly so they have room to expand, and do not stir.
- 08
Cover the pot tightly and let the dumplings steam undisturbed for fifteen minutes.
Do not lift the lid under any circumstances; escaping steam will give you dense, disappointing dumplings.
Notes
Skim excess fat easily using an ice-filled ladle.
Pre-cooked roasts can release a lot of rendered fat. If the broth looks too greasy before adding the dumplings, run the bottom of an ice-filled metal soup ladle across the surface to congeal and lift away the fat.
Embrace the chaos of the viral soup dumpling swap.
For a wildly untraditional cross-cultural twist, skip the biscuits entirely and drop a box of frozen pork soup dumplings into the stew during the final five minutes.
Adapt for a plant-based kitchen with mushrooms and vegetable broth.
Swap the beef for a pound of aggressively seared cremini mushrooms or soy chorizo, and verify your commercial biscuits are dairy-free.
From The Irish American Table.