 Hi everyone, welcome back to Demetri's Dishes. So today, actually it's fall right now and this is the best time of year to make nice hearty warm pots of soup. This is going to be, I'm teaching you to make a lamb and orzo stew today. It's kind of in between a soup and a stew. It's not as thick as a stew and it's more leaning towards a soup but I think Rachel Ray coined the term stew so we'll call it that. We'll call it a stew. It's really delicious. It's very easy to make. Everything is made in one pot which is, I mean, it doesn't get better than that. And I'm using orzo but you can definitely make this gluten free or wheat free by substituting the orzo for some chickpeas or your favorite beans or even rice if you really like that. We're going to go over the ingredients and then we're going to get started. We need some lamb. This is a boneless leg of lamb that I've cut into big chunks and it's best to cut it into bigger chunks rather than small chunks just so that way since it's going to be cooking for a while it doesn't shred and fall apart. You can substitute beef for this if you like. That would be good. We have some fresh parsley, oregano, salt, pepper, fresh mint. You can use any of your favorite herbs and spices for this. I'm using mint and parsley. You can use rosemary if you like or even basil. I have crushed red pepper flakes, some cut up celery, a carrot, a bay leaf, some chopped onion, whole garlic cloves. I have a whole cup of orzo here, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, a little bit of honey and paprika and of course some olive oil. So I'm going to, I have my pot really nice and hot here and we're going to begin by browning our meat just a few minutes on each side just until it gets really nice and seared and that's going to take about four minutes and you want to do this in batches, maybe in like three batches. This is about four, four and a half pounds of meat so I would definitely do this in three batches if you were to do it all in one batch. Instead of browning it'll just release liquids and then it won't brown really. And that's definitely the sound you want to hear when you're browning meat. So this last batch needs about a few more seconds and the meantime I'll just chop up these carrots. So it takes about three to four minutes for each batch to brown properly and just keep in mind that you definitely don't want to walk away from the pot while this is happening because depending on the pot and the strength of your flame you might have to play with the fire a little bit so that way it doesn't blo- you know instead of brown you don't want it to turn black and burn. So just keep an eye on it. You're looking for a really pretty red color, reddish brown color on the meat. That's really what you want. Now you're going to have this beautiful golden, they're almost like an Auburn shade of browned bits on the bottom. That is flavor up right there so you definitely do not want to get rid of it. To this we're going to add our onions and I've learned a trick. I've learned that you don't even have to mince garlic if you're putting it whole with your onions. While the onions are cooking that the oil does cook the garlic cloves and then they soften and they melt into the stew or the soup or whatever you're cooking. And if they don't happen to melt you can just fish them out and mash them a little bit lightly. But what I did right now is I added my onions and my whole garlic peels. I'm just going to add a tiny bit more olive oil. I'm going to let this cook for about 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes on medium heat until they're really nice and soft. And then we're just going to add everything else to the pot and let it cook. So I'm going to cover the pot and allow this to cook and I will move on to the next step. So it's been about 12, 13 minutes and you know don't go by the time just go, just take a look at what it looks like. It should be translucent. The onion should be soft. The garlic should be soft enough where if you smash it with a wooden spoon or anything that you're cooking with it should smash easily. And that's how you know you can move on to the next step which is basically putting the meat and the vegetables and most other ingredients in the pot. So what we're going to do now we'll add our chopped celery and you want to make sure you chop your vegetables not too small but not too big either. Sort of like the same size if you can see about this size. So that way they don't melt they'll cook. They'll still have some substance when this stew is ready. We'll add our meat. You can increase the heat to high at this point. We'll add our crushed tomatoes or tomato puree. Just make sure whatever canned tomatoes you're using there's no added seasoning or flavor or salt or anything like that. A little bit of honey. It's not going to make it sweet but it will cut the acidity of the all the tomatoes that we're putting in there because we're putting canned tomatoes and we're also putting tomato paste. I'm putting about two tablespoons of tomato paste to deepen that tomato flavor and that would be half of a small can. If you're wondering what to do with the rest of this you can take it and put it in a little tupperware or what I like to put in is a plastic wrap and keep it in my freezer and make it a nice flat package and then just take it out and pop it in whatever other recipe you want to put it in. Then we're going to add a little pinch of crushed red pepper flakes for some heat. I like my food a little bit spicy. You've been around long enough you'll know that but if you don't like a spicy you can totally leave it out. Some black pepper. A little bit of salt. You can definitely add more salt as you go later on once it's cooked. Don't start off with too much salt. A little bit of oregano. A little bit of paprika. And then just some water. You can use stock if you want to. You can use some vegetable stock or chicken stock but this has so much flavor. After all these vegetables and the meat is going to add so much flavor that you don't need it. You're just going to cover everything with water. It's about six to eight cups. I like to not waste anything so I'm washing out my can. Just like that. You want to make sure all the meat is covered. Leave it a nice stir. And once it comes to a boil you're going to cover it and then reduce it to a simmer and you're going to let it cook. There's some honey left on here. I don't want to waste that. You're going to let it cook for on a simmer for about an hour and a half or until the meat is really nice and tender. And then at that point I'm going to show you what we're going to do next. I'm going to cover my pot. Let it come to a boil and then let it cook on a low simmer for an hour and a half, about an hour and a half or an hour and 40 minutes. And it will move on to the next step. So my stew has been cooking and simmering for an hour and a half and it's thickened up really nicely. The meat is so tender that if you touch it with your spoon, you know it's completely cooked because it's not falling apart but you can cut through it really easily. That's how you know. The vegetables are all nice and soft. Now at this point, before I add my orzo, I'm just going to thin it out with a little bit more water and let it come to a complete boil. And that's because the orzo also acts like a thickening agent and I don't want it to absorb all the liquid and then just be meat and stew because I have a recipe for that and that's called Yvettezi. So make sure you check that out. I'll put in the link and we're not making Yvettezi today. We are making a lamb and orzo stew slash soup. So when you're making a soup, you want it to have lots of liquid. So we can add some water at this point. Let it come to a boil. Once it comes to a boil, I'm going to add my cup of orzo and then I'll also add a little bit more salt and taste the seasoning and see if it needs anything else like more pepper or more salt and I'll adjust that to my liking. I'll add the orzo, cover it and I'll let it cook for about 10 minutes or until the orzo is al dente. I don't want it to be melting and falling apart. Now here's a nice tip. Let me cover this so it can boil faster. Here's the tip. If you're making this for your guests early, you can make this the day before and just leave it at this point and then right before your guests come and you're warming it up, cook the orzo at that time because if you're going to put the orzo in in the morning, say you want to make your food early, make it in the morning, get ready, run whatever errands, get your house done or whatever you're doing, you're serving for your family. If you put the orzo in in the morning, it'll just sit there and it'll get softer and softer and then it kind of gets too soft and when you're serving it, sometimes it's falling apart. So just do this step first and then add the orzo right before you serve it. That'll keep it al dente. Same thing if you're making this the night before and serving it the next day. Put the orzo in at the last minute or just put it in and take it off the heat and don't cook it, whatever you want to do. But as soon as this comes to a boil, we're going to add the orzo and let it cook for about 10 minutes. I'll chop up my parsley. I already chopped up my mince and then I'll toast some bread and it'll be ready to serve. So it's boiling, I'm going to add my orzo. Now I'm adding a cup, you could add less or more whatever you like. I'll put a little bit more salt for the orzo, give it a nice stir. And in 10 minutes, our food will be complete, cover it up and let it cook. Alright, so I'm going to turn the heat off because my orzo has been cooking for about 10 minutes. And what I did was every few minutes, I just went in with my spoon over here and I just gave it a mix because sometimes orzo has a tendency to go to the bottom of the pan and it kind of sticks. It releases eventually but I wanted everything to cook really nice and evenly. Now at this point, I'm going to add my chopped up mint because mint, mint rosemary and parsley goes so beautifully with lamb. I'm not adding rosemary to this because I'm using mint and parsley but you could do mint, you can do rosemary, you could do basil, parsley, whatever combination you like but at the end it just smells, I wish you could smell this, it smells so comforting, so good. This stew, slush soup is so, so, so good around this time of year. At this point you want to take your bowl, of course, and look at how beautiful that looks. Now it does tend to thicken as it sits so if you want to thin it out just a little bit, you can just boil a little bit of water before you serve it and just add it in like maybe half a cup or so. But if you're serving it right away, this is what you're going to get. Beautiful, now of course what I like to do, I like to toast some bread and then a little bit of feta cheese crumbled on top, goes good with everything. But you could also do some Parmesan shavings like some really good Parmesan or Regiano take, get a good chunk and shave it on top of here and that goes perfectly on here. Let me wash my hand. Now of course as always all of the recipes with the exact measurements are on my website www.dmitriarddishes.com. I have hundreds of recipes on there so go on there and check it out and see what you want to make. Now definitely give this one a try you guys, it's so comforting and delicious and perfect for feeding a very big crowd as you can see. Let me taste it first. It's really hot so I'll take the meat later. The orzo is cooked perfectly. Tomato with the oregano and all of these flavors together is just perfect, it's perfection, that's what that is. Give it a try. I really want to hear your comments, I love reading your comments down below so let me know how it turns out. Let me know if you have any suggestions of how you do things differently or how you make it. Let me know what you want to learn how to make next and I started uploading blogs so make sure you check those out, they're kind of funny sometimes. I'll see you guys next time, subscribe, check my website out, thumbs up the video and I'll see you all next time, bye everyone.