Frogmore Stew

Name: Frogmore Stew
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Southern
Ingredients: Potato; Sweetcorn; Reduced-fat smoked sausage; Raw prawns; Onion; Garlic; Olive oil; Lemon juice; Bay leaf; Black pepper; Salt

449 kcal a serving, against 703 for the traditional version. That is 254 kcal off, or 36%, with 51.2g of protein. Serves 6. 45 minutes.

What the traditional version is

Potatoes, sweetcorn, smoked pork sausage and raw shell-on prawns boiled in a big pot with spiced water (usually Old Bay). Finished with a generous pour of melted butter and served with lemon. Pick your bits and eat with your fingers.

What changed, and what each change costs

400g smoked Italian pork sausage for 350g reduced-fat pork sausage

You need the smoky bite for flavour and to make the whole thing feel like a meal, but pure pork fat doesn't help you out much on this page.

What it costs you. You'll get a bit less richness and the sausage slices won't drip quite so appealingly. If you're lucky enough to find a properly smoky low-fat sausage, use it. Otherwise, you're just getting something that looks the same, but tastes a little cleaner and less decadent.

900g shell-on prawns to 1.1kg

Since you're cutting back the sausage, it's only fair to bump up the prawns. They're still the main event and you'll barely notice the swap.

What it costs you. You do have to peel more of the little beasts. If you eat with your hands anyway, that's more fun than hardship.

100g melted butter for 20g olive oil to finish

Pouring melted butter over everything is the last hold-out of mischief here. Olive oil at the end still makes things glisten, just with far fewer regrets involved.

What it costs you. You'll miss the buttery hit, but not as much as you might think. There's enough shellfish brine and lemon to keep things interesting. If you demand the butter, just use less.

Potatoes down from 900g to 600g

More shellfish, less starch. With bigger prawns and more of them, no one is going away hungry.

What it costs you. You'll have less ballast for soaking up the brine at the bottom, but no one ever finishes the potatoes anyway. Promise.

What goes in it

The ingredients, without the quantities. The weights are what the figures below are computed from, and they are in the book.

Potato
Sweetcorn
Reduced-fat smoked sausage
Raw prawns
Onion
Garlic
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Bay leaf
Black pepper
Salt

How it starts

Fill your biggest pot three-quarters full with water.
Add the potatoes and cook for 10 minutes.
Add the sausage in thick slices and sweetcorn chunks.

The rest of the method, and every weight, is in Authentic-ish Southern.

The numbers

Per serving	Traditional	Lightened
Calories	703	449
Protein	45.2g	51.2g
Fat	35.9g	9.1g
Saturated fat	15.5g	2.2g
Carbohydrate	55.8g	45.7g
Protein per 100 kcal	6.4g	11.4g

Every figure is computed from the recipe's own weighed ingredient list against public food composition databases. The appendix in Authentic-ish Southern prints the exact database row used for each ingredient, so any number here can be checked. How every number is computed sets out the method.

Allergens. crustaceans.

The method is in the book

Frogmore Stew doesn't mind losing calories. You're already boiling most of the fat away, so this is the rare one where nothing vital gets lost. Swap the sausage, add prawns, skip most of the butter - nobody will notice at all. If you insist on big pats of butter melting over everything, well, I'm not your conscience.

The quantities and the method for this dish are in Authentic-ish Southern, along with 50 more. Buy the paperback