As soon as a chill is in the air I turn to my slow cooker. It’s a bit of a seasonal thing for me although it does make occasional summer outings.

Today we were headed out for the day and so I whipped out my trusted friend to make a Spanish style stew.

I love cooking with chorizo and sweet paprika. The amount of flavour from just a tbsp of sweet paprika is incredible and chorizo well I use it in anything and everything. For me though the best part of this stew was the addition of Orzo towards the end of the cooking time. It turned it into a more substantial meal and we all loved it

Anyway without further ado here is the recipe:

You will need:

3 inch chunk of Chorizo diced and browned in a pan
Tin of potatoes drained and halved
Tin of carrots drained
1/2 courgette roughly chopped
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1/2 yellow or red pepper diced
250ml of beef stock
1.5 tbsp of sweet smoked paprika
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
250g of orzo

Put all ingredients aside from the orzo in your slow cooker.

I cooked on high for 3hrs and on low for an additional 5 ( purely as I was going out and didn’t want it to overcook ) In the last 45 minutes cook your orzo to packet instructions ( usually 8 minutes), drain and add to your stew. You could just add to stew earlier on uncooked and add more liquid but I didn’t plan the orzo – it was a bit of a whim. Take the lid off your SC for the last half hour as it helps to thicken the dish. Enjoy with hunks of buttered bread. Delightful. Warming.

We all LOVED this dish including my 3yr old. Would serve 5-6 people.

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