Cooked Gallego

How to make a little Galician food .

The one of cocidito to say something because rather it is a cocidón, the one that my mother prepares, Rosa.

One of the most famous meat recipes of autumn and winter. Worthy of a king, who exceeds anyone’s expectations and in which the pig is the protagonist.

A masterful dish where as much as you look for nothing is left over, and it will not be for lack of ingredients, some of the casseroles where my mother prepares them are larger than my little cousins.

Galician stew is usually the most abundant and consistent of the different Spanish stews. You should not miss a good vegetable dish: collard greens, curly cabbage, white, turnip greens or turnips.

All seasoned with a little daub, some good Galician potatoes, some chickpeas and different varieties of chorizo ​​(meat or onion). In addition to other parts of the pig: lacón, ear, cap, rib, tongue, nose and tail.

It is also accompanied with good cooked Galician beef. It is an exaltation of the pig slaughter, one of the traditions that still persist in Galicia.

If you want to do a gastronomic route through Lalín the Sunday before the Entroido (carnivals) you will find “ A Feira do cocido de Lalin ” (Pontevedra), without words.

Galician stew preparation

1. Two days before preparing the stew we put the salted pork parts to soak. The ear, tail, cap and the shoulder, changing the water at least once. In the same way 12 hours before we let the chickpeas soak.
2. Add water to a pot or casserole, the largest you have at home, put it on the fire and when it starts to boil add the chickpeas.
3. It is best to put them in a special cloth bag for vegetables.
4. Then the pieces of pork (except the chorizos that we are going to cook separately as I mentioned in step 4) and the beef that you like the most.
5. Let everything cook over medium heat in the pot for 1 hour and a half to 2 hours. More or less, it depends on the kitchen, in the case of my grandmother’s house it is a wood stove, and it always goes a little slower.
6. We salt half-cooked. We are removing the meat as it is done and it is tender. Usually first the ear, then the tail, the beef, then the cap and finally the pork.
7. Thus we are preparing in a source all the meat while the rest of the stew is done.
8. We cut the cap (except the nose) into sheets and the rest of the meat into equal pieces.

Final preparation of the Galician stew. 2 Cooking phase

1. In another pot we cook the cabbages with the whole leaf. Add the whole potatoes, a little daub (optional, there are people who don’t like it, although I love it) and the chorizo ​​on top.
2. In cooking, we froth occasionally to remove the fat from the broth. The chorizo ​​sausages (usually they tend to be poorly cured) are made immediately, in 15-20 minutes.
3. We leave it for about 10 more minutes and we will have all the cooked ready. I don’t like vegetables (turnip greens, turnip greens or cabbage) as a puree, so I remove them a little earlier.
4. Finally we present the stew in four sources. In one you put the pork (cap, tail, ear and pork), in another the beef and chorizo ​​(cut in half). The vegetables and potatoes separately and the chickpeas in another source.
5. You see that you need a very large table and a few guests to eat all these wonders. This year at my grandmother’s house we have incorporated a new dish into the Galician stew: the soup made with the stew broth.

A tradition that we emigrants in the madriles have imported, improving the gastronomy taking the best of each house. I hope you liked it and encourage you to prepare this recipe even once.

Be sure to enjoy all the stews, casseroles, stews and yummy soups in our recipes for soups and stews , and of course all the recipes with meat both to make the famous  stew croquettes ,

You can see all the photos of the step by step of the Galician stew recipe   in this album. Do not miss any detail and it will be perfect.

Do not stay with this stew, try, compare and if you find it … eat it

• The stew has inspired couplets, books and even an opera. And it is a good idea to try them all, at least to have a personal opinion of which one you like best.
• Throughout the Spanish geography we find cooked in multiple variants, the Galician , the Basque, the Catalan escudella , the Asturian pot , the famous Madrid stew , the mountain stew, the rotten pot, the Canarian stew ,  the Andalusian or pringá , the stew Maragato , the gypsy pot from Murcia , the preacher’s dam in Aragon, and one that I am sure I forgot … all variants of the same idea, the stew .
• But in my opinion where you put a Galician stew … shot for the land. I imagine that it is a customary theme and of which I have tried the only one that resembles anything is the Maragato stew , and perhaps the Asturian pot .