What Do You Like In Your Beef Stew? (sugar, potatoes, meat)

[rainroosty]

I love to add organic thyme. It is by McCormick and is in a very nice bottle along with the other McCormick products in your market.

[Debsi]

Originally Posted by Lodestar

Magnifique!

I like a simple stew - browned beef cubes, potatoes, carrots and onions in a thickened beef broth with barley, salt and pepper.


A recommendation - if you are ever anywhere near the Latchkey Inn in Icebox Canyon south of Spearfish, SD have a bowl of their buffalo stew.

Why thank you!

I'll be sure to check it out should I ever find myself in South Dakota. I've heard it's beautiful.

I might try your stew sometime minus the cooked carrots.

[PeteyC]

Real simple here, stew meat sauted with onions garlic, celery and peppers with salt and cayenne pepper and your preferred other spices. Add potatoes, our alternative is turnips, carrots and continue saute while striking pot to get all bits from bottom combined; then slowly add beef stock and simmer, low and slow. Than add peas, corn or nothing, again your preference. Check broth, if needed, add corn starch to cold water to add to broth to thicken. Adjust seasoning. Continue to simmer until pot yells out at you with aromas that say it is time to eat!

[noregon98]

One item I started putting in is frozen peas.

I think I saw it on a Jamie Oliver show many years ago.

I thought it was kind of odd sounding, but as I checked it's quite a common ingredient.

I do use wine in pasta sauces but I try to avoid it in stews and other recipes, if for no other reason than I'm way too hard on my own cooking, whereas if someone else added wine to my stew recipe...I would probably enjoy it!

[coolgato]

Potatoes, corn, and some cinnamon.

[CAjerseychick]

I like to put in turnips for me, potatoes for SO...
Definitely onions, carrots, celery, and peas- saute everything with butter, add some broth for liquid with maybe a little red wine... Those are the basics besides the beef!

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Beef shoulder cubed and caramelized, onions, potatoes, carrots, a bit of finely chopped celery, rutabagas, garlic, black pepper, season salt. A few springs of fresh lemon thyme if I've got it.

Cooked in the crock pot. I think you get better gravy if you cook it is a cast iron dutch oven in the oven, but timing is not critical in the crock pot.

Thicken the gravy with corn starch at the last minute.

I like corn on the cob served with it, but not corn cooked in with it. Corn bread, or biscuits, or baked sour dough bread buttered with parmesan and paprika to go with it.

[LegitBusiness]

Potato cubes, beef steak chunks, beef gravy, celery slices, carrot slices, garlic, salt. Eat with a side of biscuits. Yummy delicious.

If I want stew and can't make it for whatever reason then I will purchase cans of Dinty Moore which has a deliciously salty flavor. I don't really trust canned food anymore after this Obama-era food contamination crisis but I gambled the other day and ate 3 cans of Dinty Moore stew and it didn't taste contaminated. Hopefully it wasn't.

[Miss Hepburn]

I didn't see anyone take a couple cups out and blend it - place back in, thus,
eliminating the flour to thicken.
I happen to love tarragon ---this is my chance. I always use a bit of curry ---but you don't taste it.
Some sort of tomato for color is good.
Beer is a must.
I never used bay leaf ---I will try that one.
Wanna try the Thai one...(except for the Fish sauce ---I'm thinking with my fussy cats maybe I could use
mine on their food ---I never seem to use it...bad after taste in the morning.)
Gotta sear the meat and the onions.
If Red wine, it has to be good to drink, also, not some left over.
No peppers, for me ---over-powers the Irishness of the whole thing.
I gotta rem - Chuck only.

[in_newengland]

Cubed stew beef chuck (floured and browned first), carrots, potatoes, peas, rutabaga, and it's cooked in the slow cooker. Lots of potatoes.

I cook the beef first for a couple of hours and the vegetables go in later because they don't take so long to cook. Throw in some chunks of onions near the end. I cook some scraps of carrots, like the ends, right from the beginning and then throw them out because they were just for extra flavor--I think my mother used to use an entire cut up carrot just for flavor and then discard it The real carrots for eating are added later.

Thicken the gravy and often I used to make dumplings and plop them on top. Just a simple dumpling recipe will do. But it's a winter meal and the dumplings are best on a really freezing winter's day. I don't flavor it with anything except the flavor of the vegetables, especially the carrots that cook for hours and then get thrown out. Probably salt and pepper if I need extra flavor. (Dumplings were just flour, baking powder, milk, a bit of salt.=delish.)

That's pretty much how I remember my mother making stew (except for the slow cooker) and her family came from northern Vermont so she knew about cold weather cooking!