Get stewed!

A new company, heading into Ocado and Waitrose at the end of August and early Autumn respectively, ‘stewed!’ is all about delivering hand-made, gourmet, ready-made stews that are funky yet wholesome, interesting and convenient.

Featuring a range of unique, internationally inspired recipes and ingenious flavour combinations - all hand-made this new range of stews is also a heart-warming - from kitchen to outsourcing within a year - success story.

Forget watery vats of soggy veg and gristly meat, bubbling into bland oblivion. This isn’t stew as we remember it. This is stew that has been sent on a world tour, via Morocco, Persia and Spain, no doubt taking in some partying in Ibiza en route, and has returned brimming with international inspiration and the audacity to experiment with it.

This is a stew that isn’t afraid to marry chicken with sour cherries and walnuts or with green olives and preserved lemon. A stew with less of a pinch of, more of a punch; less of a sliver of, more of a slab. This stew went away to find itself and found that it was actually cool.

Since reaching a stew epiphany on the Circle Line in 2007, stewed! founder, Alan Rosenthal, began honing a range of hand-made, gourmet, ready-made stews in his kitchen. The emphasis was on quality, wholesome ingredients, plenty of them, inspired combinations of them, and all united by some of the finest herb and spice balances known to stewkind.

The idea was simple: a convenient, delicious, high quality, yet affordable meal, which filled the gap between soup and ready meal. Microwaveable, freezable, hard-not-to-eatable. And it worked. Two years later, via the farmers’ markets, food fairs and some phenomenal feedback, his stews are to be launched on Ocado.com from the end of August, in London Waitrose stores in early Autumn and will also be found in King’s Cross’s upcoming Sourced Market. You can already get stewed! in Harvey Nichols’ food hall and selected Budgens.

The stewed! family:

• Persian chicken stew (from £5.49) – filled with Eastern promise … and British chicken (45%, to be precise), perfectly partnered with sour cherries and ground walnuts and topped with fragrant spices and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses.
• Chickpea, roast sweet potato and feta stew (from £4.49) – chickpeas cooked with hearty veggies, smoked paprika and saffron, laced with crumbly feta cheese and roast sweet potatoes. (V)
• Chorizo, chickpea and pork stew (from £4.99) – slow-cooked chunks of tender British pork, lovingly combined with smoky, Spanish chorizo, chickpeas, some fresh, hearty veggies and a pinch of saffron.
• Moroccan chicken stew (from £4.99) – tasty chicken chunks (46%: stewed! don’t skimp), cooked with juicy green olives, tangy preserved lemons and a sprinkling of exotic spices.

For more information ,visit steweduk.co.uk.