Beef Stew

Easiest if you have a giant bowl and pot.

Ingredients

Don’t be intimidated by the long ingredient list; the recipe is easy but there is a fair bit of chopping involved.

  • Vegetable oil

  • 4 lbs stew beef (typically pre-cut into cubes at grocery stores)

  • Flour to bread the beef cubes

  • 1 large white onion, chopped (not too finely)

  • 5 stalks celery, chopped

  • Bit of red wine (or white wine worst case), for lifting flavors off of pan

  • Rosemary, to taste

  • 6 large russet potatoes, cut into ~1” cubes

  • 1 lb carrots, cut similar size to potatoes

  • 56oz whole peeled tomatoes

  • 2 Tbsp beef bouillon

  • 2 cups water minimum

  • 1 bag frozen pearl onions (optional)

  • 1 bag frozen peas, let them thaw while you make the recipe

  • Salt, to taste

  • Pepper, to taste

Prep

Mix the meat with flour in a giant bowl to lightly bread it. Use the oil to brown the meat, one batch at a time, in a frying pan, moving browned meat to a giant pot as you go.

Once done browning the meat, add more oil if necessary and then add the onion, celery, and rosemary. Sauté for a minute or two, then add some wine. The goal is to lift any browned bits of meat/flour off of the pan while evaporating the wine, leaving you with flavor-packed bits of onion/celery. Add the onion/celery to the pot.

Add the potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, beef bouillon, and pearl onions (if using) to the pot. Add water until there is enough liquid to boil everything, and make sure to mix the bouillon throughout. Bring the pot to a boil and simmer for at least 2 hours.

Add the peas and return to a boil for a few minutes to heat them through. Season with salt and pepper to taste. DONE!

Credit

This is a family recipe, don’t know where it came from. Beef stew is pretty generic.

Recipe Details/Rationale/Tips

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional chef. This is my understanding of the recipe. Take everything I say with a grain of salt (and maybe some pepper).

This recipe is a stew. At the end of the day, you’re boiling a bunch of shit together in a pot. That said, if you just dump it all in the pot and boil it together from the get-go, it will all meld into one flavor that won’t be bad but also won’t be that great. Maybe you don’t care: by all means, obtain sustenance the quickest way possible if that fits your lifestyle.

Browing the meat before boiling yields that delicious seared/caramelized taste, and also helps it hold in its flavor better while the other ingredients get cooked through. Again, the stew is ideally not just a uniform brown mash, but has pops of distinguishable flavors as you eat the chunks.

Onions and celery are pantry staples that add a savory flavor “base”. They are used whenever you make broth, whether you are boiling other vegetables, bones, beef, or chicken to make that broth. In this recipe, they also serve as flavor “sponges”. First, we sauté them with rosemary to toast the rosemary and bind its flavor to them. Then we want to get all of that tasty caramelized meat flavor off of the pan, and onto the onion/celery pieces. That’s where the wine comes in. Boiling it helps get the stuck bits of meat/flour off of the pan and liquifies them somewhat. As all the water/alcohol in the wine evaporates, you are left with just caramelized meat + wine flavor, which all gets bound to the onion/celery. The resulting onion/celery “flavor bombs” will steadily release their flavors as the stew cooks.

Tomatoes add some acidity to the recipe to not only balance the flavor, but also to help break down the meat, potatoes, and carrots.

Beef bouillon really serves the same purpose as the onion/celery, i.e., just adding more overall flavor throughout the stew.

Pearl onions are still just onions, so we want them boiling the whole time the stew cooks. The nice thing about pearl onions is the texture: they are little liquid ballons, and popping them in your mouth while eating the stew is fun.

We add peas at the end because they are already cooked and just need to be heated up, and we don’t want their flavor mixing with everything else. We already have plenty of overall/uniform stew flavor from the other ingredients, so having little peas with only their own sweet flavor is nice.

There’s no reason to add salt ahead of time when boiling ingredients, plus the meat and especially the bouillon already has a fair bit of salt. You just add more at the end so you can guess-and-check until you get the amount just right.

You could get by just fine without adding any pepper. Like adding the salt at the end, you’re just adjusting things to your preference.