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Here's what came out - a big pot of chemically tasting stew!! This was bad. I mean, the pot smelled like stew, but upon tasting it, it tasted like chemicals and extremely bitter. Very little cooking wine went in if that's what you are thinking. I put a drop on my finger and tasted it and it tasted fine, albeit salty. Very hard to describe, but that's the closest I can get. The whole thing got tossed out and we had take out.
I would suspect the cooking wine and the crockpot mix since everything else was fairly unprocessed. Those mixes have a lot more chemicals in them than you can imagine. I would also throw out the wine. Anything wine you add to a recipe should be good enough to drink by the glass.
I was thinking the same thing about the mixing packet. What's an alternative way to make up all those seasonings - I'd like a thickener, flour? Otherwise, I like sage, thyme, parsley, garlic, pepper...anything else?
As to the cooking wine, I do not drink, and therefore do not have any type of wine for drinking in my house. I like to have cooking wine on hand because then I can get the flavor when I want it. What I'd rather have is non-alc cooking wine but I doubt that exists. Does cooking wine go bad?
I don't/cannot drink alcohol. So my dilemma was wanting to have the taste in my stew without having the real thing in my kitchen. I'll probably just let it go.
So the beef bouillon is a good idea, I have the better than bouillon in my fridge, wonder if that's still good.
Your recipe is very similar to this that got a lot of starred reviews. Slow Cooker Beef Stew I Recipe - Allrecipes.com
The one huge difference I could see is the wine and the McCormick mix. Try it again but leave out wine and the mix. Use your favorite spices instead - oregano, parsley, etc.
Chicken stock or beef stock is used as a substitute for folks that don't want to use alcohol. Don't use the seasoning mix, I never do in mines. I do coat my roast in flour first and then sear all sides to get that browning and the flour in the pan with a little deglazing from either wine or chicken stock to bit up the brown bits goes into the crock pot over veggies and roast.
That little of flour does thicken the sauce, you can also blend some of the veggies when roast is done with an Emerson blender and that will thicken the sauce.
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Add some beef bullion and/or vegetable stock. We never use Thyme in our stews so leave out #9 also.
