Will this be edible?

[arwen]

If I chuck chicken pieces, pots, parsnip, onion, carrots in the oven with a stock cube and water for about an hour and a half will it make a yummy chicken stew or be an inedible mess? How about sweetcorn? can I chuck that in as well? All the recipes I've looked at use celery and leeks and I have neither. Help! Need to feed the children and need to use up the above ingredients.

Do you have a tin of toms? I find that makes pretty mcuh "Enthusiasm Stew" into something edible.

As well as the stock or instead of? Do you think I should seal the chicken first?

Seal the chicken first, add some thyme or mixed herbs, chopped garlic if you like it, tinned toms and let it look after itself, It should be delicious. You only need to add stock if the tinned toms aren't providing enough liquid. I do things like this all the time and even the cats like it!

It should be lovely, but you may just need to thicken the gravy/sauce at the end (either flour or bisto)

Do as Tannee says - that's what I would do with a big bowl of mash...yummy!

And you think that the time will be long enough to cook the pots and parsnip etc? It seems and odd mix of flavours to me you see so I can't imagine how parsnip and tom sauce will taste. ( I don't have a hugely varied diet.....)

Put the parsnip in with the mash. Don't bother with carrots, corn etc

You could do the parsnip and pots separately, mashing them together and serving on the side.

it's the veg that I need to use, hence the chicken stew idea. Here is a really stupid question, do I steam the parsnip and then mash it?

yes, steam and mash. You could cook it in the same pan as the potatoes, cut into small pieces. It'll sweeten up the mash nicely.

You could even add the carrots to the mash. It'll look orange but taste nice.

Put the rest of the veg in with the chicken and stew in a medium oven.