Quince Stew; An Iranian Tasty Dish for Cold Season

Quince Stew is cooked in different styles. Some use split peas to make it look like another Iranian stew called Gheimeh. Some like this stew sweet and others like its natural taste. But what we instruct here is the stew traditionally cooked with meat or even chicken pieces and has its own fans.

Ingredients for Quince Stew

• 400 grammes of chopped mutton or chicken breast
• 2 or 3 big-size quinces
• 1 chopped onion
• 10 to 15 dried prunes
• 1 or 2 tbsp of sugar (optional)
• 30 grammes of oil or butter
• 1 tbsp of fresh lemon juice
• 3 tbsp of tomato paste
• Salt, pepper, saffron and turmeric (as much as needed)

Quince Stew Recipe

First chop and sauté the onions. Add pieces of meat or chicken. Then add turmeric and some pepper and cinnamon (if you like).

Peel the quince and cut it to the desired size and shape. Keep in mind that the quince must not be too small and should be medium-sized. Now, sauté the quince in oil or butter in a separate pan.

Then, add the saffron (Britannica) or sugar and the prunes and keep sautéing. These ingredients must be added to the main dish where the meat was fried. After some minutes, add the tomato paste and some lemon juice and let your stew boil on a medium heat.

The amount of sugar in the stew depends on your taste. If you want to eat this stew with split peas, after sautéing the meat, add about half a cup of split peas.

The important point in preparing Iranian stews is to cook on a gentle heat.

Additional notes for quince stew:

1. If you are a fan of quince stew, you can keep quinces in the freezer and enjoy the stew in the later seasons of the year as well. This dish is known in certain parts of Iran as quince and plum stew.

2. If you use plums in your quince stew, make sure the plums are not crispy. If they are, you will be better off soaking them in water for one or two hours before use.

3. How much time is needed for the ingredients to really stew in the water depends on the heating. Make sure the chopped plums do not get soggy.

4. Finally, the volume of the water in the quince stew should be enough for the quinces to become oily and not be dry.

Frequently asked questions:

What kind of quinces work best with the quince stew?

Get your quinces light yellow and brush away the brown fuzz on the skin of the fruit. Quinces may be light green or gold/yellow, like apples. Usually they are greener early in the season and gold later on, but both are fine for cooking.

Still, if you keep green quinces in room temperature for a couple of days, they will be ripe and yellow. But remember not to keep them unrefrigerated for more than a week, because they will start to perish.

Refrigerated quinces can last almost as long as apples. Scented quinces are smaller in size and have peach fuzz on their skin, which can be easily removed once they are washed.