Time to cook something for the family. Today we’ll be looking at how to cook a delicious beef stew.
A stew is a combination of vegetables and/or meat, especially tougher meats suitable for slow cooking, such as beef, pork, venison. While one can use water as the stew-cooking liquid, stock is also common. Additionally, one can add a small amount of red wine, dark beer, or other types of alcohol to further enhance the flavours.
Especially in the cold months of the year, this dish is the perfect comfort food. It’s not as complicated as you might think. Best part is once you’ve put it all together you just leave it to cook slowly until the meat becomes tender.
This recipe I’ll be sharing today is for a beef stew with red wine and pan seared potatoes as a side dish. Make sure to check my YouTube video before starting to cook.
Below the detailed steps for the recipe.
Ingredients for the Stew
- Beef Chuck 1.2kg
- Onion – 1 large
- Carrots – 2-3 normal sized
- Celery – 1 stalk
- Garlic – 2 cloves
- Red Wine – 1 cup
- Tomato passata – 1/2 cup
- Salt
- Black Pepper
- Red Paprika
- Ground Cumin
- Bay Lief – 2pcs
Ingredients for Pan Seared Potatoes
- 800g of white potatoes
- Salt
- Black Pepper
- Ground Coriander
- 100g of Butter
- Olive Oil
Let’s get cooking. Start by chopping all your vegetables. No need for a fine chop, you can leave them a bit bigger. Only the garlic should be cut up as fine as possible, you can even use a garlic press if it makes it easier.
Once veggies are chopped up, cut your beef into thumb sized chunks. You can use any cut of beef or any other type of meat you prefer. Just avoid using tender cuts and steaks, you need a though cut of meat.
Add some olive oil to your pot or Dutch oven and heat it up over medium heat. Once hot enough, add your carrots, then onions and followed by the garlic. Lastly add your beef and cook all until browned.
Next step is to add your cooking liquids, start with the red wine. Cook for a few minutes to make sure all the alcohol evaporates. Follow by adding your tomato passata and then add water or stock until it just covers all the meat.
Season to your liking with salt, black pepper, ground cumin, red paprika and don’t forget to add your bay leaves.
That’s it, you’re done. Cover the pot and leave it to simmer over a low heat until the meat is nice and tender.
Make sure to taste and adjust your seasoning if needed before fully taking it off the stove. If you’ve added too much liquid and it’s a bit watery just boil it for a bit more without the lid or you can add cornstarch slurry to thicken it up.
A Word of Caution: if you checked my video you might have noticed when I was adding the wine and tomato passata I already had a lot of liquid in the pot. Nothing to fear, it’s just that I added the meat when the pot was not hot enough and instead of browning the meat released some liquid. It’s all good though, the result will be still very delicious.
The introduction mentioned that you can have any side dish you want. However, if you’re interested in making the pan-seared potatoes, let me show you how to do it.
Cut your potatoes into thumb sized chunks, wash them off from all the starch and put them to boil until they are almost done. This is very important, if you overboil the potatoes once you get to add them to your frying pan, they will crumble.
When potatoes are almost done, you’ll know it’s time when they are kind of soft but still have a good bite to them, drain the water and add them to a hot frying pan.
Add in a bit of olive oil and your butter and cook until the potatoes are nice and brown, at this stage season them with salt, black pepper, and ground coriander. You are ready to serve dinner for the family.
Hope you’ll enjoy this recipe. If any questions or comment, make sure to leave them below.
Bon Appetit.