Thursday, November 30, 2017

Hybrid Beef Stew #recipe @LucyBurdette


LUCY BURDETTE: Are you ready to move on from turkey? I know I am, and this recipe fit the bill nicely. I’ve made plenty of beef stews in my years of cooking, but not in the crockpot. This time I decided I would start the stew a day ahead in the crockpot, and finish it off the next day on the stovetop. I suppose you could do it one way or the other and it would turn out just as well. But making it a day before you plan to eat lets the flavors come together. We thought this was delicious – next time I would add a little more flour to thicken the sauce.

Ingredients

1 and 1/3 to 1 1/2 pounds beef tips
Three carrots
Three stalks of celery
One and a half onions
Three garlic cloves
One sweet potato
Two russet potatoes
2 bay leaves
4 cups good quality lower sodium beef broth (Daily Pantry for me)
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

large handful fresh spinach



For thickening the stew: 


1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, 
tablespoons flour, 
1 teaspoon brown sugar, 
1/2 teaspoon celery seed,
1/2 to 1 teaspoon onion powder, 

1/2 to 1 teaspoon white pepper

Chop the vegetables:


In a large pot or in the crockpot if you have the browning feature, brown the beef tips in a tablespoon or so of olive oil. 


When all sides are brown, add chunked carrots, celery, and onion along with chopped garlic cloves, and let those cook a minute. 

Then add the potatoes, cut in 1 inch chunks, the bay leaves and the beef broth.

Cook that on high for 3 hours, then remove and refrigerate. The next day, about an hour before you want to eat, bring the stew to simmer. Mix the flour, brown sugar, celery seed, onion powder and pepper, and stir in the vinegar until smooth. Add a bit of hot broth so it all dissolves and then mix into the stew. Simmer for an hour, adding the spinach in the last fifteen minutes.


Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mysteries--find them wherever books are sold! Find her on FacebookTwitter, and Pinterest--Instagram too...



6 comments:

  1. I like to put stews together. They're a "cozy" food for us! Thank you for sharing this recipe which is a bit different from the way I usually do stew so I'm looking forward to trying it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stews are wonderful.
    I'm intrigued by your stew thickening mixture. I'll have to try it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes I think the balsamic is the secret ingredient:). Hope you enjoy it Libby!

      Delete
    2. We were gifted a bottle of 15 year old balsamic. Hmmm....

      Delete
  3. We love cooking in the crockpot. However, we never plan far enough ahead to cook one daty and eat the next. Looking at the times, I think I’d try it all in one day. Have it sit on low to bring the flavors together, then finish with the thickening step. We eat grain-free, but we use arrowroot to thicken instead of flour. Works great. Thanks. Even in Arizona, it’s beginn to feel like stew weather.

    ReplyDelete