Cawl Mamgu is Welsh leek and lamb soup. It’ll warm you up on these chilly nights, and make your tummy happy!
Cawl Mamgu is a delicious, hearty soup that is perfect for any meat and potato lover. Tender lamb is cooked with leeks, carrots, celery and potatoes in a beef and chicken broth.
It’s a soup that eats like a meal!
The leek is the national emblem of Wales, so it is only fitting that they have a soup recipe to showcase the national vegetable, along with the popular Welsh lamb, to make the country’s national dish.
It is a hearty, meat and potatoes dish that has all the flavors you come to expect from visiting the British Isles.
St David’s Day, the feast of Saint David (the patron saint of Wales) is a Welsh holiday that has fallen on 1st March every year since Saint David’s death in 589 AD.
This holiday is not celebrated throughout the U.K.; it is strictly a Welsh holiday. To commemorate this day, the Welsh adorn leek leaves and daffodils pinned to their clothes and eat traditional food like Cawl Mamgu.
Cawl is a modern Welsh word to describe soup or broth. Mamgu, is Welsh for grandma, so this is essentially ‘Grandmas broth’. These days, the soup is usually referred to simply as Cawl.
If you’ve been to, or seen pictures of Wales, you will have seen miles of beautiful green fields (usually dotted with sheep and during the spring, lambs). This soup is the landscape of Wales captured in a soup.
Lamb is a very popular meat served in Wales and is very important for the Welsh economy. Their unique heritage, character and environment are the reason for quality and taste of Welsh lamb and they are proud of this meat from their natural pastures.
The farmers use the best of everything when farming their lamb, from the grass to the shepherding which results in the finest cuts of meat.
This Cawl Mamgu soup will have you dreaming of the Welsh countryside in no time. And fill you up too!
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Cawl Mamgu Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons Vegetable Oil
- 1 1/2 pounds Lamb cut into bite size cubes
- 4 ounces Yellow Onion peeled and chopped
- 4 medium Leek washed, trimmed and cut into small pieces
- 3 Carrot peeled and sliced
- 2 stalks Celery
- 2 Parsnip peeled and sliced
- 1 pound Potatoes peeled and cut into large chunks
- 2 1/2 cups Beef Stock
- 2 1/2 cups Chicken Stock
- 1/4 teaspoon Salt
- pinch of Ground Black Pepper small
- 2 teaspoons Fresh Parsley chopped, for garnish
Instructions
- To a large soup pan add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil over medium heat.
- Add the lamb and cook until browned, remove and set aside.
- To the same pan add the other tablespoon of vegetable oil. Add the leeks, carrots, celery and parsnips. Stir and cook until the vegetables are softened, about 10 minutes.
- Add the potatoes and the lamb, beef stock, chicken stock, salt and pepper.
- Simmer for 15 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.
- Serve warm with chopped parsley.