Medieval vegetables stew with pork

We know that people ate a lot of dishes with grain and pulses and that the most common meats eaten was salted pork and fish. Kale and cabbage was also very common ingrediens. This is my base for the stew I made Saturday. I used a stew I found in a book from Ribe Vikinge Center as a base, but adapted it to what I had at hand.

I served the dish with smoked mackerel and it was crazy filling and very tasty.

For lunch there was plenty for three people and we had enough left overs for one more. If it was the main dish of the day, you might want to add a bit of bread on the side or add more barley to the dish.

Print

Vegetables stew with pork

A wonderful medieval stew with smoked pork and lots of vegetables

Course Main Dish, Soup & stew

Cuisine Campfire cooking, Historical cooking, Medieval, Renaissance, Viking

Keyword autumn, filling, medieval, viking

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 250 gram smoked salted bacon cut into dices and cleaned of fat. I used a whole piece of bacon
• 3 handfuls kale cut finely (I used half a pack of precut kale)
• 0.5 head cone cabbage or cabbage of any kind
• 1 cup pearl barley or whole barley that has been soaked overnight
• 1 cup beans Preferably board beans, but I had to use edamame beans instead - it worked fine
• 2 spring onion cut into rings, use as much of the onion as possible. Ramsons would also be good.
• 2 clove garlic cut cursely
• 5 springs thyme
• 1 plot butter to fry in - you could properly also use the bacon fat
• a bit ground mustard (optional)
• 15 grains grains of paradise ground up (optional)
• 0.5 smoked mackerel (optional)

Instructions

1. Prepare the pork. I cut of all the fat and skin and cut it into big dices
2. Add the pork to the pot and cover it with water. Boil it until the pork is done
3. While the pork is boiling, prepare all the other ingredients. Remember to check on the fire, so the pot is actually boiling.
4. Once the pork is done, remove it from the pot and save the water the pork was cooked in.
5. Fry up the spices and onion in butter
6. Add in everything else but the thyme. Add in the water you saved from the pork. Add enough water to cover everything.
7. Let everything boil until the barley is done.
8. Add the pork back in and add thyme to taste
9. Serve by it self or with a bit of smoked fish on top