Norwegian & Icelandic · Main
Fårikål
- Easy
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a warm current of chile, a silken, spoon-slow texture.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg lamb shoulder and neck on the bone, cut in 4 cm pieces with the fat left on
- 1.5 kg white cabbage, cut through the root into 3 cm wedges
- 25 g whole black peppercorns
- 30 g plain flour
- 14 g fine salt
- 400 ml water
- 1 kg small waxy potatoes, to serve
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Lay the fattiest pieces of lamb fat side down to cover the base of a heavy pot, then a layer of cabbage wedges, and scatter flour, salt and peppercorns over; repeat the layers and finish with cabbage.
- Pour the water down the side, cover, and bring up slowly until you hear it ticking rather than knocking.
- Hold at about 90C (195F) for 2 to 2 and a half hours, without stirring, until a piece of meat gives under the back of a spoon and the cabbage is translucent but the wedges are still wedges.
- Tilt the pot and spoon off the clear fat, taste for salt, and serve with boiled potatoes and plenty of the liquor.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes
- It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
- It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
- It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
- It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
- Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.
Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
- Also Right
- Malbec
- From the Taps
- Porter
- Zero-Proof
- Pomegranate spritz
Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.
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