Old Fashioned Beef Stew, revised.

Old-Time Beef Stew, Revised.                                   Prep Time: 5 Minutes

Original Recipe courtesy of Paula Dean                  Cooking Time: 2 hr 15 min

Note: A link to the original recipe can be found at the bottom of this page, this ingredients list and cooking instructions are all my personal attempts to make a perfect beef stew. Feel free to remove or substitute any ingredients you like. I have no idea if having both a shallot and onions made a difference or not, I just felt like cooking a shallot, same with the bacon.

Ingredients

3 strips thick cut Bacon (or 6, see Step 1)

2 pounds Stew Beef

2 tablespoons Olive Oil

2 cups Beef Broth (You may want to use Low Salt)

1 cup Red Wine (I used The Grinder Pinotage)

1 bottle of Porter or dark Stout

1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

2 large Yellow Potatoes cubed

1 large Tomato chopped

1 156ml can Tomato Paste

2 cloves Garlic, crushed

1 or 2 Bay Leaves

1 medium Onion, chopped

1 large or 2 small Shallots, chopped

¾ teaspoon Salt

1 teaspoon Sugar

½ teaspoon Pepper

½ teaspoon Paprika

dash of ground Allspice or ground Cloves

The veggies go in after all the ingredients above have cooked for a while, so keep them separate, eh?

3 large Carrots, sliced

3 ribs Celery, chopped

2 tablespoons cornstarch

Instructions:

Step 1: Fry up the bacon and then use it to make yourself a grilled cheese & bacon sandwich, cause who doesn’t get hungry cooking bacon? And you’ll be hungry again by the time the stew is ready. Then fry up 3 more strips and put them aside on a plate with some paper towel.

Step 2: Caramelize the chopped onion and shallot until they getting golden looking and almost see through. You can do this in the same pan as you did the bacon in with a little bacon fat, or in the stew pot, but either way they are going to be put to the side until after the beef is browned.

Step 3: Brown the stew beef, in the pot, with the olive oil. Note: This step is one I still have to fiddle with, just browning the beef in oil works, but results in very plain tasting beef. On the other hand, this recipe is really easy to get too salty. If you you season the beef, maybe flouring it as well, I’d recommend reducing the salt to ½ teaspoon or none at all, and then tasting the stew before adding the carrots and celery to determine if it needs more salt.

Step 4: Add beef broth, red wine, beer, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, bay leaves, onion, tomato, potatoes, salt, sugar, pepper, paprika, and allspice. Cover and simmer for 1 ½ hours. Note: I only just realized I messed this step up and only simmered for half an hour, but it turned out wonderfully anyway, So I suppose it depends on how thick you want your stew.

Step 5: Add carrots and celery. Cover and simmer for another 30 to 40 minutes.

Step 6: To thicken gravy, remove 2 cups hot liquid. Using a separate bowl, combine ¼ cup water with cornstarch until smooth. Mix with a little hot liquid and return mixture to pot. Stir and cook until bubbly. Note: This step is pretty pointless. The original recipe called for only 2 cups of water, and after cooking for 2 hours there was hardly any liquid left.  I just dumped cornstarch & water mixture right in. And anyway, if you use starchy enough potatoes and flour the beef, you might not even need to use cornstarch.

So, there you go! My attempt at the perfect beef stew. As I’ve said it still needs some fiddling with but it’s definitely going to get better from this point on. If you do want to revise this recipe to your taste, I suggest you do what I did this time and print off a paper copy and make notes of what you do differently. As Adam Savage said “The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.”

Original Recipe by Paula Dean, found on the Foodnetwork.com http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/old-time-beef-stew-recipe.html