pork stew or ragout? call it whatever, it's up to you!

Something I've pondered is the difference between these, because whenever I look up a ragout recipe, it reads like a stew to me.  I'm doing a bit of researching online and it seems that a Ragout is a slow-cooked main dish stew, a french method of cooking.  Hmm, so they are the same thing - right?



What a mess! Stew at it's finest!



Not necessarily!  It seems to me that stew is an all encompassing series of dishes, and involves a diverse range of ingredients, thickness, heartiness, and cook-times - some *gasp* don't even need meat! (I actually love making vegetarian stews, so there).

I suppose what I made last night would constitute as stew as it had more vegetables than meat but is very ragout in it's slow cooked approach, but it was nice and light and as always - great results.

This recipe is based on BASIC STEW RECIPE from Jamie Oliver's food revolution
(look up the combos for stew, you can't mess it up).  The motto of this book is basically to share, so I'm sharing!  I have made the beef and chicken versions in the past with (I dare say it) SPECTACULAR results.    This version was based on Pork with some of my own flair (these recipes leave wiggle room for sure), I have never made pork stew before.  So let's give it a go! (photo coming soon)

PORK STEW

Ingredients:
3 cups of dry apple cider (Growers)
1.5 lbs of pork stew meat in 1inch pieces
3 small onions (or 2 medium)
3 large stalks of celery
2 gigantic carrots (or 3 medium)
2 medium parsnips (about 1/2-3/4 lb)
2t olive oil
1 28oz can of diced tomatoes
2 generous T of all purpose flour
a bundle of fresh thyme
salt and pepper

Method
- Take a few sprigs of fresh thyme and bundle them with butcher's twine, set aside.
- Peel and chop your onions and carrots into fair sized chunks.  Take the leaves off your celery stocks and chop into fair sized chunks (couple cm or so).  Set all of these in a bowl.   Peel and chop the parsnip into large chunks and set aside in a separate bowl.
- heat your olive oil over medium heat in a large dutch oven or big pot.  Put in your carrot/onion/celery mix with your thyme bundle, a few grinds of fresh pepper and a dash of salt.  Cook this until golden and fragrant, about 8 minutes.
- Add your parsnip chunks and stir around, coating in the herbs and aromatics, another 2 minutes.
- Add your pork and the flour, stir around until entire mixture is nice and coated.
- Add the cider and the tomatoes, stir right in there, get to the bottom of the pot and scrape off any of the flour
- Bring this mixture to a rolling boil for about 10 minutes
- Put in the lid on, reduce to a simmer for about 1.5 hours
- Take the lid off for another half hour; remove thyme bundle, and you're all set to eat!

Notes:  As you are making this stir it a few times to ensure the mix isn't catching on the bottom, don't go nuts! you don't want to constantly be losing all of the heat.   The original recipe called for 2.5 hours of stewing time, I found the pork to be very tender after 2 hours, plus I added the rolling boil part at the beginning to give the stew a head start.
This would go spectacularly well over rice (which we did NOT do) or served with some garlic toast (which we did do) 

Jamie also has some great ideas for dumplings, potatoes, and pastry toppers for these stew recipes. 
Check out the beef and ale version of this stew to get your mouth watering!http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/beef-recipes/beef-ale-stew-1