Beef Stew

Cold, rainy days that bite at your bones are for cuddling on the couch and making warm, rib-sticking meals like beef stew.  When the weather gets to be too much, and the kids haven't been outside in a week, you know it's time for this meal.  This recipe is basically an amateur emulation of a what my mother, a veritable a stew-whisperer, taught me.  I simply adjust her recipe to whatever vegetables I have on hand.  You can pretty much throw anything in and come up with a great result.

Start by dredging your beef in flour and then browning it with a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat.  You'll know it's done when you see a little blood poking out.  Turn the beef and brown the other side in the same manner.  Set the meat aside as you work in batches, adding olive oil as needed to keep the pan from drying out.  For this recipe I used a dutch oven, but a skillet will work just fine.  However, if you are using a skillet, and are transferring your ingredients to a slow cooker, you will need to adjust your cooking time (see below).

In the same pan, add one large chopped onion, a little more olive oil, and cook for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally.  You're done when the onions are a starting to brown and your spouse yells from the other room, "What smells so good?"  At this point add a can of tomato past and coat the onions.

Some of the brown yummy bits from the bottom of the pan will have come up by now, but just in case, add a cup of red wine and deglaze the pan.  Simply said, when the wine hits the pan and immediately boils, use it to scrub all the flavor off the pan's surface and onto the onions.  This step happened with a freshly wakened Tilda (it was probably the aroma) in my arms, so there is no picture, but trust me, it's very, very easy.

If you haven't already chopped your vegetables, now would be the time, and fast.  I just do this before hand so that I don't have one of those "I'm trying to make up for not having the super fast, finger keeping knife moves of a pro and now everything is going to Hell right in front of me, because I need fifteen minutes to chop veggies" moments.  

In this case we have about a pound of multi-colored potatoes, three turnips, a few long red radishes for kick, baby carrots, the aforementioned onion, and a few sprigs of fresh thyme.  For proper culinary shout outs, the starch was from Trader Joe's, the thyme was from my garden, and the rest came from the CSA we belong to called Good Fortune Farm.

At this point you need to add your broth.  I used three cups of beef broth and then threw in about a tablespoon of kosher salt and a bay leaf.  No, I have no idea what bay leaves impart on this meal or any other for that matter, but I still use them.  Now I like a sticky, less watery stew, so my dutch oven will soon be covered and transfered to the oven at 350 degrees.  If you like a more soupy stew and plan on transferring your food to a slow cooker, you will only need about two cups of broth.  Oh, go ahead and take that beautiful plate of beef and add it back to the pot, mixing everything into a savory mass of goodness.

You are now ready to "cook" everything.  Cover your dutch oven and bake the whole thing for about three hours.  The slow cooker version will take about four hours on high, or if you did all of this before noon you can cook it on low for, well pretty much forever, but eight hours should do the trick.

When the time is right, take the lid off and stick your head as close to the pot as is reasonably safe, inhale, and voila!  Beef stew with a side of childhood memories.

Ingredients:

3 pounds beef (chuck or bottom round, nothing too lean or fancy)

1 cup flour (maybe more)

1 pound potatoes

3 medium turnips

3 long red radishes

1 large onion

1/2 pound baby carrots

3 sprigs fresh thyme

1 Tbs. kosher salt

1 Bay leaf

3 cups beef broth

1 cup red wine

6 oz. can tomato paste

Comments

[DCUrbanDad]

YUM!!!!

We got our beef stew on a few weeks ago. It would have been better this weekend.

[Liz]

So is this the beginning of a new cooking blog?

[Curious Kiwi]

You have a garden? Hmmm... haven't mentioned it before. Do you have any pictures?

[Jill]

Dutch Oven (Ha!)

[Joe]

I can't believe it took that long.