November 30, 2009

Beef Stew

I knew that I was going to be home all day on Friday, so I decided it was the perfect day to make beef stew. My mom used to always make stew in a crock pot, but I don't have one yet, which meant slow-cooking on the stove. Which meant that I was going to need to stick around to stir occasionally.



I didn't take a picture of the end result because beef stew always just looks like...brown stuff with lumps. Not very appetizing in a photo. This was taken about 15 minutes after the pot was put on the stove.

I used 5 carrots, 5 potatoes, 2 onions, 2 large cloves of garlic, and (of course) a package of stew beef. For the broth, I started with a package of beef stock then added about 3 cups of water - just enough to have everything covered. I added 2 crushed beef bouillon cubes along with cayenne powder, onion powder, and garlic powder. Then I put a cover on the pot and left it on the stove, on low heat, for about 5 hours (stirring every 15 minutes).

Once the potatoes and carrots were soft and the meat was tender, I realized that I still needed to thicken the broth/gravy. I really hate trying to thicken with flour (i end up with mini-dumplings), but luckily I had some left-over fried zucchini in the fridge...so that got tossed into the pot. Another 15 minutes and I had perfect beef stew. I thought that it was delicious and ended up eating quite a lot of it that night before giving the rest away.

My most recent attempts at cooking have been great, so I'm crossing my fingers that tomorrow night's dinner will come out just as well. Check back in later this week to find out about my Thai-inspired chicken creation along with how it turns out!

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