Feeding the hard-to-please

Children are very fickle about food. A dish they claim to love one day can be inexplicably shunned the next – very frustrating for parents who just want to make sure they leave the table properly nourished. When you’re 6, you don’t get to make many decisions yourself – sometimes deciding not to eat your dinner is the only thing you can control. This is where parents can get sneaky! When my children are going through a fussy phase, we make stew bags.

“Stew bags” were mine and my cousins’ favourite meal when we stayed with our grandparents. Grandma would set out lots of little bowls with chopped onion, apple, root vegetables, minced lamb, herbs and spices and make a tin foil pouch for each of us. We were then free to make up our own concoctions, getting to know the smell of the herbs and spices and just choosing the ingredients we felt like at that particular moment.  Grandma would then do the important job of sealing it all up with a little stock inside, then we’d label our packages and into the oven they’d go.

45 minutes later – hey presto! We’d each have our own individually designed stew and we’d all happily tuck in, thinking that our combination was the best. Clever Grandma!

Stew Bags

Minced lamb, beef or pork; cubed chicken, chorizo or cocktail sausages

A selection of vegetables in cubes – try carrots, celery, potatoes, peppers, onions, tomatoes

A selection of fruit – cubed apple, dried apricots or raisins are a good idea, especially if vegetables are a hard sell

A selection of herbs and spices – dried herbs de Provence are good if you don’t have any fresh and you could try offering a mild curry powder as an option too

¼ stock cube per bag

Approx. 100 ml hot water per bag



• To make the bags, give yourself plenty of foil and use a double layer – there’s nothing more disappointing than a leaky stew bag. Fold it in half and where the edges meet, fold over the edge 3 or 4 times and flatten well to seal. Do the same to what will become the bottom of the bag then emboss your chef’s name with a blunt pencil.
• Preheat the oven to 180⁰C / gas 4 while the children make their ingredient selections and fill the bags. It’s best to stop when they’re only 2/3 full (you can mark a line on the bag when you write the names if it makes it easier to police!).
• Add the hot water yourself and seal up the bags, folding over several times as before.
• Transfer the bags to a deep baking tray then bake in the oven for 45 minutes.
• Cut the tops off the bags with scissors, being extremely mindful of the hot steam that will escape, and tip each one into its own dish.

Et voila! No horrible burnt-on casserole dish to wash up afterwards, just the foil to throw away. If you start making these a lot – and they are pretty addictive – you can keep the chopped up veg in tubs in the fridge, so any unused ingredients are quick to put away and get out another day.

****

Hope you have fun with these – get in touch and let me know what your favourite stew bag combinations are.

Happy nibbling!
Fiona B x