Sunday, generally a quiet day over here, so plenty of time to spend the afternoon preparing a tasty dish for dinner.
In Belgium, stew, a simple stew of pulled pork or beef, is a typical dish, even on the list of national Belgian dishes.
But a few years ago I discovered pork cheeks. These are prepared just like stew, and these have a much finer taste!
So I don't have to tell you that since then, ordinary stew meat is no longer prepared here, but that here at home the choice always falls on pork cheeks.
And the preparation is quite simple, with not too many ingredients that you need. So I'm happy to share the recipe with you so you can try it.
As I said, you don't need much in terms of ingredients:
You see, not many ingredients, so not much work either. Preparing this dish only takes a little time, but in the meantime you can of course write an article! ;-)
In a large stew, place a firm knob of butter and let it melt.
As soon as the butter is heated up, add the pork cheeks and let them brown nicely on all sides.
Once they are nicely browned, add a bottle of beer of your choice. Some people choose a sweeter beer, because when you take a bitter beer you will also experience that bitterness in the dish!
I opted for my own brew of a triple beer of ABV 7.4%, although the alcohol volume does not play a role here, because all the alcohol evaporates due to the preparation time.
So no, you will not get intoxicated by eating this dish! :-)
Once the beer is on the meat, bring it to a boil, then lower the heat so that it simmers a bit. You can keep this up for an hour.
Stir occasionally so that the meat does not burn.
And of course, while preparing this dish you can of course also enjoy the delicious beer. So maybe provide 3 bottles instead of 2 as ingredients! ;-)
After simmering for an hour, add the spice mix and add another bottle of beer, because a lot of moisture will have been lost.
Stir well, bring back to the boil, and then lower the heat again so that the dish can simmer for another hour.
Stir occasionally so that the dish does not burn, and continue enjoying your bottle of beer!
And after two hours, the pork cheeks are done, and your dish is ready! And the result looks delicious, and the smell in the kitchen invites you to start eating the stew right away. But if you leave it for a while it gets even better, so now it can cool down for a few hours.
A few hours later we start preparing the meal for the lazy Sunday evening. Potato croquettes with pork cheeks and a simple salad.
For the lettuce, we opted for a package, which does not provide any work, and half a package of mixed vegetables with radishes. We put this together, with a little mayonnaise, some pepper, salt, chives and parsley.
The potato croquettes here are not traditionally prepared in frying oil, because my wife does not digest it well. We often use a hot air oven here, especially the air fryer.
The potato croquettes just go in there, straight from the freezer. The packaging now clearly states how much time they need and at what temperature in the airfryer or oven. So we give the airfryer its time.
In this case it was 11 minutes baking at 190 degrees Celsius, in a preheated oven.
Meanwhile prepare the lettuce and the dish is ready to serve.
And then it's fun! Add a beer with which the pork cheeks are prepared, that makes it complete!
And so this afternoon was successful, and certainly the evening, and it tasted again!
Thank you for reading! And have a nice week!
