Unless you’ve been in a well insulated cave, you know that a good chunk of the United States has had way below normal temperatures in the past few weeks. Cold weather = comfort food and one of my favorites is beef stew.
In years past I would have just thrown the ingredients along with the contents of a seasoning packet into a slow cooker and walked away for a few hours. The results were always so so; warm but not exactly satisfying .
This season I have upped my game and started using a dutch oven for the beef stew. The prep is mostly the same as before but the results are amazing.
Ingredients:
2 lbs stew beef, cubed
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves minced
1/2 onion chopped finely, not quite minced but small pieces
2 cups red potatoes, quartered
4 large carrots peeled and sliced into 1/2 inch chunks or smaller
4 large celery stalks trimmed and sliced into 1/2 inch chunks or smaller
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
4 cups beef broth
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 -1/2 cup water
1/2 cup red wine
Alright, here is where you spend a bit of time getting things ready. I think the French call it mise en place or something like that. The point is to spend the time chopping and measuring your ingredients so that when you start making the the recipe you can add them exactly when they are called for. Things like carrots and celery can definitely be chopped ahead of time, hours or even a day or two!
I know this because I had intended on making beef stew the day before I was actually able to make it. Yours truly didn’t carefully read the recipe over and realized, after chopping the carrots and celery, that I didn’t have enough time to make the stew before dinner time. I was also missing key ingredients like potatoes! <Face palm>
So that being said, once you have everything prepped get your dutch oven or other pot or pan on the stove. Add the olive oil and turn the heat on to medium high. When the olive oil is hot add as many pieces of the stew beef that will fit comfortably in the dutch oven with out touching. Brown them on each side and then remove them to a plate while you continue browning the rest of the stew beef repeating the process until they are all browned. This takes maybe a couple minutes for each side, the point is to brown them not cook them through. One tip: when you first place the stew beef in the oil don’t move it! Let it sit there for a couple minutes so that it will develop a nice brown crust of sorts. Then after a couple minutes flip it over and then remove it once the other side is browned.
Some people meticulously brown all sides of the beef, I tend to just brown the front and back and call it good.
When you have browned all the beef, keep your pan on the stove over the same medium to high heat and add the garlic and onion and stir this around for about 2-3 minutes. Then add the half cup of red wine and use a wooden spoon or other non stick utensil to scrape the bottom of the pan to get all the browned bits of beef, onion, and garlic off so that they are in the wine rather than stuck to the bottom. This is called deglazing and it makes the stew amazing. Yeah, I know I rhymed there but if it helps anyone to remember this crucial step my work is done.
I have switched this part of the recipe up in these photos. So you are seeing the onions and garlic added after the wine. The results were good doing it this way too. As I explained above this can be reversed. So feel free to experiment with what works for you.
Now add the beef, potatoes, carrots, celery, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, and beef broth. Turn heat down to medium low and bring the ingredients to a low simmer. Cover with a lid and let simmer at this heat for 2 hours.
After 2 hours has elapsed open the lid. Looks good, right? Maybe just a little watery? Here is where the cornstarch comes in. Measure 1/4 cup cornstarch and place in a bowl. Pour 1/4 cup of cold water into the cornstarch a little bit at a time as you mix it. Then take this mixture and pour it a little bit at a time into the stew making sure that you stir the stew well after each addition of the cornstarch/water mixture. When it is all added and stirred together let the stew come back up to a simmer and it should then be at a good thickness. At this point it is ready to serve with a nice loaf of french bread! Enjoy!
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