This post was last updated on August 24th, 2024 at 03:42 pm
Cawl recipes help you plan the perfect meal when you’ve got a craving for hearty soup. Cawl is the Welsh word for “broth” or “soup,” and it’s pronounced similarly to the word “owl” but with a “k” in front (“kowl”). This satisfying food made with potatoes, leeks, and traditionally lamb is the national dish of Wales. What we’d recognize as cawl today was invented during the 14th century. However, it’s far older than that. Cawl, or at least its early form, predates the country of Wales itself and its language, going back even before primitive Welsh was spoken.
Cawl recipes that we make today are bursting with not only flavor but a colorful history. Beyond its literal meaning, the word “cawl” also has a cultural significance—one that speaks to its Welshness. It makes a lot of sense when one looks at how this dish grew with the people, the times they lived in, and the resources they had on hand. Cawl got its start in the late Neolithic period, around 2500 BC. This was a good 1500 years before the Celts arrived in Britain.
Therefore, it wasn’t the Celts but the “Beaker People” who cooked the earliest cawl. By the late New Stone Age, the Beakers had gradually shifted from hunting and gathering to farming and raising sheep and hogs. They cooked their soup by boiling water over fire-heated stones—different than the Iron Age method of suspending a pot or cauldron of some kind over an open flame.
This post is about cawl recipes, their history, and ingredients.
Cawl Recipes
What About Potatoes?
The Stone Age farmers likely used cabbages and leeks as the main vegetables because those were the most readily available at the time. These primitive folk added beef, lamb, or pork to their cawl. They thickened their cawl by adding oats. To add flavor to beef cawl recipes and others, they used the herbs they grew or found growing wild, such as mint, savory, and thyme.
Not only that, but there wasn’t a potato to be found. As far as cawl goes, potatoes are a relatively new addition. They didn’t make an appearance in Wales until the early 1600s (thanks, American colonies!). Even then, the potato wasn’t widely used in Wales until the 1800s. Though there are still some similarities, it took the passing of many years and cultural changes in Wales for cawl to become the dish we know today.
How Long Does Cawl Take to Cook?
The amount of time needed to cook cawl depends on what method you prefer.
- In a slow cooker: 5 – 7 hrs on high or 8 – 10 hrs on low
- In a pot on the stove: 3 hrs
- In a pot on the stove with a “resting period” overnight: 12 hrs (approx.)
How to Make Cawl
With your choice of meat, leeks, potatoes, and a few veggies, cawl is easy to prepare. Leaving the meat on the bone will give you the best flavor, as well as adding stock for the broth. You can also make your own stock the day before. If you can’t get lamb stock where you live, vegetable stock works just fine. The slow cooker recipe below will help get you started.
One of the Best Slow Cooker Cawl Recipes
Ingredients
- 1 kg/2.25lbs lamb shoulder bone-in
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 yellow onion peeled and diced
- 4 garlic cloves peeled and minced (or use a garlic press)
- 1 large leek sliced
- 5 medium potatoes peeled and left whole
- 3 carrots peeled and sliced into coins
- 1 swede rutabaga, peeled and chopped
- 1 bay leaf
- 48 oz vegetable stock
- Salt and pepper to taste
- small bunch of fresh parsley chopped
- bread and cheese if desired, for serving
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large saucepan. Add the lamb shoulder, left on the bone, and brown it on all sides.
- Transfer the browned meat to the slow cooker. Add the leeks and cook in the same pan where you browned the meat. Add a little more olive oil if necessary to prevent sticking. Stir the leeks occasionally until they become soft. Then, transfer them to the slow cooker.
- Add the rest of the ingredients to the crock pot and stir everything well.
- Place the lid on the slow cooker. Cook the cawl for 8 – 10 hours on low or 4 – 5 hours on high. (The meat should be very tender. The potatoes will be soft (but you don’t want them mushy) and start to break apart when stuck with a fork.)
- After the desired cooking time, open the lid and turn off the cooker.
- With a spoon, skim off the excess fat from the surface.
- Remove the bone from the lamb (the meat will fall right off) and break up the meat with a fork. Discard the bone.
- With a knife, break up the potatoes into rough pieces.
- Discard the bay leaf and stir the cawl gently. Serve in a bowl with a side of bread and cheese. Enjoy!
Notes
- Cook time: 8 – 10 hrs on low, 5 – 7 hrs on high
- If you prefer a thicker cawl, make a paste of oat flour and water and stir it in. You can also directly add a small amount of oats.
Is There a Chicken Cawl Recipe?
Chicken is not a traditional addition to Welsh cawl recipes, but of course, if you’d like to make your cawl with chicken instead of lamb, beef, or pork, you certainly can. Chickens didn’t make it to Britain until 800 BC when they were introduced by Phoenician traders. The Celts didn’t view them as a food source but as more of a divine symbol. It wasn’t until much later, after the Roman occupation, that Britons began to consume poultry.
Even then, the poorer folk didn’t eat their chickens, only their eggs. Because of this history, soup or stew prepared with chicken isn’t referred to as “cawl” like those with the other traditionally incorporated meats.
Chicken, Leek, and Potato Soup
Ingredients
- 1 large leek sliced thin
- 3 medium potatoes diced
- 0.11 kg/¼lb bacon cut into 1-inch pieces
- 2 liters 8½ cups chicken broth or stock
- 0.45 kg/1lb chicken breast cut into 1-inch cubes
- 1 cup milk or unsweetened almond milk
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Add the bacon to a soup pot on the stove. Cook until it’s almost crisp.
- Add the chicken pieces. Sauté for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Rinse leek thoroughly. Slice the white and light green parts into rounds. Discard the tough end pieces.
- Add the leeks to the bacon and chicken. Fry leeks for 3 minutes or until they start to wilt.
- Add the potatoes and chicken broth.
- Season with salt & pepper to taste.
- Bring soup to a boil and simmer it for 20-30 minutes or until the potatoes are very tender.
- Once potatoes reach the desired tenderness, use a potato masher or the back of a spoon to mash them lightly.
- Stir in the milk, heat to just about boiling, and serve.
5 Things You May Not Have Known About Cawl Recipes
To summarize, here are five notable points about cawl:
- Soup or stew referred to as “cawl” has a cultural significance specific to Wales, much like “Guinness Beef” is an Irish dish.
- The Beaker People, not the Celts, were the earliest people to make cawl in Neolithic Britain around 2500 BC.
- Cabbages and leeks were the primary vegetables used in early cawl recipes since they were the most available.
- Potatoes didn’t make it to Wales until the 1600s and weren’t widely used in dishes like cawl until the 1800s. So this tuber is the newcomer on the scene, relatively speaking!
- Chicken is not a traditional ingredient in cawl due to economic reasons and how the Celts viewed chickens. That being said, chicken soup or stew is delicious, and if you want to add chicken to your cawl… no judgment here!
This post was all about cawl recipes, their history, and five things you may not have known about them.
You may also enjoy the Copper and Cobalt Trilogy, a fantasy series set in North Wales. Click here for all eReader formats: Universal Book Link and here for Amazon Kindle and paperback: Amazon
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