Lamb stew

I saw lamb, pre-chopped, in the grocery store on my way out of Albuquerque and thought, hmm, I wonder what I could do with that? Ans: stew. Ridiculously delicious stew that I want to remember how I made.

So:

Chop up an onion and sauté it in the Instant Pot. After a couple minutes, when the onion is pretty translucent, add a couple pinches of some dried herbs: rosemary, oregano, basil. Let them sauté with the onions. Slice up two cloves of garlic and toss them in. After a couple more minutes, when the onions are getting a little bit brown but not too brown, add the lamb. Let it cook for a couple minutes, then stir it around and let it cook for a couple minutes more. Mix about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar with a cup of water and add it to the pot, scraping up any bits that are stuck to the bottom and changing the setting from sauté to Stew. Add two chopped up red potatoes* and a large handful of baby carrots. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Close up the pot, let it cook. When the timer goes off, let the pressure release naturally for about twenty minutes.

It was seriously perfect stew. I think it was the insta-pot, not anything in particular I did, but the carrots still tasted like carrot, just flavored and soft, and the potato still tasted like potato and the broth was amazing. I used less than a pound of lamb, but figured I’d have enough for two days, but no, I ate it for lunch and had seconds, and then did the same thing again for dinner, perfectly happy to eat the same food two meals in a row. And if I had more, I probably would have eaten more. So yum.

Yesterday was pretty close to a perfect day. I cooked, I wrote, I walked the dogs. The food was delicious, the words were mostly satisfying, and it rained, so the dogs and I got wet, but it was warm, so we weren’t cold. Serenity was a cozy little happy house. And I am very much liking Kansas.

*Potatoes are a nightshade and I don’t usually eat them, but the store didn’t have white sweet potatoes and orange sweet potatoes just weren’t what I had in mind. I bet they would have been fine, though.