Three ingredients, budget friendly lamb stew

By Claudine Noppe

It’s the end of the month, you are counting your cents, the fridge is empty, what do you make for dinner? This is a very common problem faced by people living on a tight budget all over the country. South Africa is classified as a low to middle income country with 49.2% of people falling below the poverty line. That is half our country. Not only is our country plagued by power outages, the pandemic and recent lootings, but the food prices have increased significantly in the past 10 months.

Food is a human right, and yet half of South Africa can barely afford to fill their shopping baskets once a month. The price of a basic food basket filled with 44 core items have increased with 7.1%, which is more than the inflation rate. While the price of starches such as maize and basic vegetables has slightly decreased, the price of meat has increased with as much as 14%.

Knowing how to make the most of your meat products is detrimental to cooking within a strict budget. Using staple vegetables such as potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots and tomatoes in meals can stretch your meat products. By adding vegetables to a meat dish in a clever way you may be able to feed up to double the amount of people, as a dish without vegetables.

As a newlywed couple my parents were very budget conscious. My mom told us that sometimes they could only afford one pack of 250g mincemeat a month, and that they’re favorite meal was a very simple dish consisting of the minced beef, cabbage and potatoes. My mom would add so much cabbage and potatoes to stretch the meat that they could freeze it and live off it for a couple of weeks. My dad used to joke that the meat was merely a seasoning for the cabbage and potatoes. As we grew up my mom started making the dish with short rib. I still ask her to make this every time I come home from Uni. I decided to make this dish with lamb. Yes lamb is more expensive than beef but over the last year lamb prices have increased with less than 9% while that of beef increased with more than 15%.

With the amounts in the recipe I could serve four people generously and it cost me R86.00 for the ingredients. I served my stew with maize porridge (pap), as it is something I always have in my pantry, but this dish is also delicious with rice or some thick slices of bread.

Click here for the downloadable recipe

Ingredients

·         1 large head of green cabbage, thinly sliced

·         2-3 large potatoes, peeled and quartered

·         250 g of lamb stewing meat (I used leg cubes)

·         Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1.       Start by browning the meat on both sides on a high heat. Remove the meat and add the cabbage, reduce to a low heat. There was enough rendered fat from the lamb for me to sauté my cabbage, but you can add a teaspoon or two of oil if you want to.

2.       On a low heat, sauté the cabbage until it has cooked down quite a bit and caramelized somewhat.

3. Add the potatoes and meat back into the pot and about 60 ml of water and salt to taste. Leave to cook on a low heat for 2-3 hours or until the meat and potatoes are fork tender.