The Art of Making Perfect Beef Stew

I’ve been cooking for over 25 years now. One of my first dishes was beef stew. It’s taken me many long years to master the taste, but I have done it. Beef stew, meet perfection.

Being the generous cook that I am, I will share with you my particular secrets. Be aware that every tip is worth many gold coins, weedhopper. Haha! OK OK enough horsing around, here’s how I make perfect beef stew:

1. Cut everything into bite-sized cubes EXCEPT the potatoes.
Potatoes get mushy. Nothing’s worse than chowing down on savory stew only to sink your teeth into potato paste. I use white potatoes with their skins. I cross-cut the palm-sized taters and they boil to perfection in the pot.

2. Don’t pre-sear your meat.
I know, I am bucking the trend. Seared meat is so good, yes– at a barbeque! But it dries it out and the cubes usually taste like battle-hardened, wooden dice. A stew is comfort food, it should be smooth and really savory and it shouldn’t take 10,000 chews to eat through it. Save the seared meat for the cookout.

3. Add everything to the pot all at once.
Some fancy cookbooks recommend that you cook only the beef and onions together and, once these are cooked through, add the vegetables for the final hour. I think this type of stew is more of a mish-mash of disjointed flavors where the individual ingredients all keep their individual flavors. Like any good soup or stew, it’s the combination of all the ingredients cooked together that makes a savory, luxuriant, unique flavor. Just for the record, the ingredients in my basic stew are: beef cubes, white onion, white potatoes with skins, carrots (only a few), rutabaga.

4. Don’t add salt to the pot.
Allow the diners to add their own salt at the table. Potatoes absorb salt while they cook, so you’ll wind up adding more and more salt and wondering why the stew doesn’t taste salty! Skip the salt and let everyone add his own, to taste.

5. Use rutabagas or turnips.
I dislike boring old potatoes/onions/beef stew. I like a little panache. Rutabagas add a lovely light-orange color, tons of vitamins, and a peppy tang that bland potatoes don’t give. I usually go half-and-half with the rutabagas and potatoes, adding one huge rutabaga and 8 or 9 palm-sized white potatoes to the big stockpot.

6. Add a teaspoon or two of horseradish sauce.
Notice I said SAUCE. Not plain horseradish! You can certainly add plain horseradish, but don’t add several teaspoons or you will ruin the stew. I use the creamy horseradish sauce, the kind you spread on bread for sandwiches. It really adds some zip to the stew.

7. Add some leftover Ramen seasoning.
My sons love the instant Ramen noodles packages, but I do limit their use of the heavily-seasoned packets. I usually have a ton of them laying around. They are really great for soups! I only use about half a packet for a huge stew.

8. Use beef broth.
I don’t use straight beef broth, too expensive! Instead, I split it with water. For a huge stew that fills a stockpot, I use about 1 cup of broth and water.

9. Don’t overcook!
I allow my stew to boil on the stove in a big stainless steel crockpot. Three or four hours is sufficient to soften all the ingredients and cook the meat. Don’t allow the stew to boil, either. Once the stew starts to simmer, turn it on LOW and cover the pot. Stir it only once or twice throughout the entire cooking time. Let the stew sit for about 20 minutes after cooking, so the flavors can blend.

10. Serve with fresh bread, not crackers.
Crackers, in my opinion, detract from the soothing, smooth stew experience. A hunk of freshly baked Flax Seed Bread is so perfect.

So this is how I make my stew. Try it, try it, you will see! You will like it, I guarantee!

Summer Fare

For the second time ever, I have made steak on the grill. It’s *OK.* I’ve never been much of a steak eater because the best tasting steak is rare or medium rare steak… and I like it well done because I don’t like eating raw cow. :-p I tried marinating it in mustard and Kens Caesar salad dressing (which is phenomenal stuff). It was palatable.

The nice thing about steaks is that, unlike hamburgers, I don’t have huge shoots of flames erupting from the BBQ from lots of grease. And I hate getting splattered with grease while I grill. :-p With steaks, it’s a little nicer.

This summer has turned out to be a little weird. I am not sure why. Maybe it has to do with the very unusual and extreme weather we’ve been having. From wacky late frosts to flooding to tornadoes, it’s been WEIRD in Upstate New York. We even had a power outage for the first time in a LONG time here. I don’t mind them so much– the sons miss the xbox headset, sure, but I can always cuddle with a nice book in a quiet corner. But I’d really rather not have the tornadoes and floods, thank you.

How’s your summer going?

Cuke It Up

HOT. Ugh. It’s summer! I hate running the oven in the summer. :-p

So we’ve been using the grill a bit more often now. I’ve been trying to get creative but I’ve really been a tad lost these days. I’m busy with so many things that I neglect the cooking.

BUT. Yesterday I splurged and bought a bunch of thin steaks on sale at Hannaford. I love Hannaford meats. They are really good, quality meats and the prices are usually pretty good. I’d been to Walmart and was disgusted at the meat section there. I don’t know what happened, maybe the head meat man is on vacation, but the places was a mess. Old, browning meat – filthy, half-empty shelves – HIGH prices! I skipped WM this time and took the extra time to go to Hannaford. I’m glad I did. We feasted on grilled steak. The last time I made steak was… well…… hmmm… maybe…. 19 years ago? It didn’t turn out so well so I guess I’ve been kind of gun shy.

My husband loves steak but the reason I don’t make it very often is because it turns out so dry. I made sure I slathered these babies in plenty of balsamic vinegar salad dressing (I was out of spiedie sauce) and cooked them gently. But you know what made the steaks? My daughter’s Tsatsiki cucumber dip. WHOA.

It was perfect, just perfect. It was cool and crisp and tangy, just the right everything to go with the steak. The last time she made it was in January… and I have no idea why we waited so long to make it again. It’s very healthy and it goes with everything– flat bread, salad, on meat and fish, everything. In case you missed the recipe last time, no need to wait for invitationbox.com invitations– here it is again!!

Tsatziki Cucumber Yogurt Dip
32 oz. tub of plain yogurt
1 cucumber, peeled and grated (or diced into very tiny cubes)
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 Tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon dried dill weed (more or less, depending on your taste)
Salt to taste

The most tedious part is grating the cucumber. I guess you could toss it in the food processor as long as the machine doesn’t make it into soup…. but I think the chunks are delicious. Definitely give this a try. Yum!!!

Crockpot Recipe: Beef and Barley Stew

This is one of my old tried and true recipes. I’ve been making variations of it for years. We love it, and it is SO good on a cold night! Pardon my ad hoc measuring units– I rarely use measuring cups so the units here are good guesses. Use your own creativity a little, and adjust the recipe as you wish

Beef and Barley Stew
2 lbs beef cubes
2 Tablespoons flour
Ground pepper
1 cup dried barley
2 cans beef broth or stock OR 1 can beef gravy with 1 can water added
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar (optional)
1 teaspoon prepared mustard (optional)
1 cup chopped or shredded carrots
1 white onion, diced
1 teaspoon paprika

In a separate bowl, mix the flour and ground pepper. Toss in the beef cubes and coat the cubes thoroughly. Place them in the crockpot.

Toss the rest of the ingredients into the crockpot. Stir everything. You can add other vegetables in there if you wish, such as leftover green beans, etc (just make sure the pieces are small). Turn on LOW for 8 to 10 hours. Stir the stew from time to time. Add a little bit of warm water if the stew needs it.

Tip: remember to sift through the barley before you toss it in the crockpot. You should also do this with dried beans. I commonly find stones in the bags, as big as stepping stones! Well, OK, they are not THAT big, but they sure feel like it when your teeth hits them!

I also make this in a Dutch oven on the stovetop, too. I usually cook that all day on low. You’ll know it’s done when the barley is very tender and the beef melts in your mouth.

New Recipe: Crockpot Cranberry Brisket

I’ve been testing various crockpot meals from my iPhone CrockPot Recipe Finder app. I like the app because it makes an automatic shopping list for me, so I don’t have to do all the organizing and writing. I did a review of the app, you can click the link to read it.

Well, this time I tried the Cranberry Brisket Crockpot recipe. The rating for this recipe is only 2 out of 5 stars. The ingredients looked a little weird, and when I put them all in the crockpot, it smelled even weirder. I did wonder if this was really going to turn out OK. I felt a little queasy when I mixed the sauce with tomato sauce… hmmm….

Cranberry Brisket
2.5 pounds brisket (I used a regular pot roast)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 can cranberry sauce
8 ounces tomato sauce (I had only paste, so I used that and added a little water)
1 cup chopped onion (I used white)
1 tablespoon mustard (I didn’t know if they meant dried or prepared, so I used prepared.)

Place the beef in the crockpot. Sprinkle the salt and pepper and rub it into the meat a little.

Mix together the remaining ingredients. Pour on top of the beef.

Cover, and cook on Low for 8-10 hours, or High for 4-5 hours.

Well, here’s what I did a little differently, besides altering the ingredients a little as I already said:

I didn’t exactly chop the onion. I sliced it, and placed it on top of the roast.

I also accidentally used whole-cranberry cranberry sauce. I didn’t read the can well enough. I tell ya, I was sweating buckets when I just stirred the can in to the tomato paste. It didn’t smell so good, not to me. I wondered how acidy this sauce was going to be! Then I had to stir in mustard!

I covered the pot, flipped on the switch (I set it at High and it cooked for about 6 hours). Hours later, the roast smelled REALLY good.

I had no idea what to serve with it… what do you serve with tomato and cranberry?? I threw in some sliced red potatoes and served a side dish of broccoli and cauliflower.

My Hubs said this roast was outstanding. It turned out great!!! And it’s SO easy. The sauce was not acidy, it was savory; and the side vegetables were a perfect match. So this is our new roast recipe.

I give the recipe a 5 out of 5. I do recommend setting the crockpot on Low for 8-10 hours. The higher setting worked well, but it would have been nicer if I had cooked it longer. I am such a lousy crockpot cooker, I never get to the recipe 8-10 hours before dinner time!

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