Chicken Stew (by G)

Biggs commented the other day that we had not had a good stew in a while (she may have said 'ever' but I think this is an exaggeration).  I set out to make a good stew and was close to successful.

The night before I put some white beans in a bowl of water to soak - after 24 hours I boiled them in plain water while boiling some bacon bones in their own pot to make some stock. The reason I didn't boil them together is that I've heard that beans won't become tender if boiled in salted water, and I figure baconised pork has a healthy dose of salt in it.

Once I had the stock and the beans at the correct point of cookedness the rest was easy. Fry some onions, chorizo and chunks of chicken thigh (separately) then progressively add them along with cubed celery, carrot, swede, potato, some thyme and cracked black pepper and simmer for an hour.

Actually, I've found it quite vexing in the past that when you stew chorizo all the flavour goes into everything else and the chorizo ends up as bland lumps - so I added the chorizo right at the last moment, along with the little nuggets of bacon meat that I had stripped off the bacon bones.

I don't know that this was the best stew ever, but it was welcome filler on a cold, wet day.