Beef stew is wonderfully hearty and comforting meal in the winter. I love that I can fix it and forget it.
And having a stash of herbs in the freezer adds quick and easy flavours to the stew…
During the week, everyone in my house is on a different schedule. A couple of Wednesdays a month, I am home until mid-afternoon, which allows me to throw together a meal that can sit in the oven at a low temperature, or in a slow cooker.
Dinner on demand 🙂
On this particular Wednesday, the oven won. I was feeling a little chilled, and the warmth of the oven appealed to me.
I didn’t have much time to put this stew together, but I was armed with a full pantry and a freezer full of flavourful herbs.
The beauty of beef stew for me is that I can assemble the ingredients ahead of time, then let the ingredients and appliances do their magic while I work or play 🙂
I picked up stew beef cubes and a loaf of french bread earlier in the day. I prefer to purchase a roast and cut it up into cubes myself, but I knew I didn’t have much time to get this stew done before I needed to leave.
First, I finely diced an onion, celery stalk and a carrot, and sauteed them in butter until they were softened.
While these vegetables were sauteing, I peeled 5 cloves of garlic, cubed 3 carrots, 2 large potatoes, an onion, and about 15 mushrooms.
This is not an exact recipe — mix and match vegetables to what your family likes and what you have in your pantry.
After the vegetables were prepped, I tossed the stew beef in flour seasoned with pepper and a bit of salt. If I had time, I would have added garlic powder, onion powder, maybe dried thyme to the flour to build more flavour, but this was a rush job.
Lucky for the beef, half of it got to sizzle and brown on one side before being thrown into the roasting pan. Sometimes – OK, many times, I omit that step too.
While the beef was browning, I put the kettle on — not for tea 🙁
Once I dumped the beef out of the frying pan, I added 4 cups of beef broth to the pan to deglaze the pan and bring the stock to a boil.
I added the diced vegetables and beef to the roasting pan, along with the 4 cups of hot beef broth, and two additional cups of boiling water.
Had it been a leisurely weekend, I would have taken the time to go to the basement and find a bottle of wine to add instead of water, and enjoy some wine with the beef stew 🙂
And I would have searched for some tomato paste to add in (about 1 tablespoon) — but that would have required time opening a can too.
So, I opted to add in a few generous splashes of Worcestershire sauce – quick and easy and adds a lot of flavour to beef dishes.
Now for the herbs – it’s so wonderful to have herbs on hand in the freezer to add quickly – straight from frozen.
First the parsley. My kids bought a bunch of fresh parsley a couple of months ago — they were making a turkey dinner with their friends and used the fresh parsley to make my mom’s stuffing recipe.
I asked them to freeze the parsley they didn’t use. So they did…
In the produce bag that they bought the parsley in, still intact as a bunch. No freezer bag, nothing!
I didn’t know what to expect when I pulled the parsley out of the freezer, but it looked fine.
So I chopped off some of the stems from the bottom, and leaves from the top, then further chopped the parsley up a bit so it distributes throughout the stew. Done.
Then I added a few sprigs of frozen thyme and sage on top of the stew. The little thyme leaves will come off the stems themselves as the stew cooks.
I covered the top of the stew with parchment paper — I saw this little technique on a cooking show years ago (have no idea what show it was anymore), tried it, and found it resulted in more tender stew meat.
I baked the beef stew in the oven at 350 degrees F (177 C) for about 2 hrs, then turned the oven down to 200 degrees F (93 C), where it sat until my husband came home from work.
I forgot to add a few bay leaves to the stew, which would have added more flavour. Oh well (sigh)
By the time I got home from my class, my husband and daughter had eaten the stew, and packed it into containers for the fridge. I ate some and put it away.
Sadly, I have no picture of the finished stew — I was so tired when I got home that I totally forgot about snapping a picture.
What’s your favourite fix-it-and-forget it meal?
Enjoy 🙂
Barb
P.S. Looking for some stewing ideas? Check out these cookbooks for inspiration:
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