I put a little olive oil in my big Dutch Oven. When it's hot, dropped in my beef and browned it on all sides. Now, Julia Child would tell you to dry each piece of beef off so it will brown properly, but I don't usually have that kind of patience!
I like to buy a beef roast and cut it into cubes. Watch the prices. Quite often, I can buy a blade roast cheaper than stewing beef. Did you know cheap stewing beef can be cut from the neck and lower legs and the other 'not so desirable' areas? I like to sort of have an idea of where the stuff comes from. A good butcher will chunk up the brisket, which is great too! I remembered to salt and pepper the meat while it was browning.
I like to use about twice as much raw veggies as I have meat. Sliced and cubed all my veggies to add while the beef is browning.
Here we have turnip, sweet potato and mushrooms. I also like to put Zucchini in (the long green squash,) but didn't have any on hand this day. I like zucchini, because it just takes on the flavor of whatever it's with and the boys don't mind it's there!
Once the beef got to a brown stage, threw in a cup or so of chopped Spanish onion and let them brown up just a bit to increase the flavor.
After the meat browns, I poured water into the pot SLOWLY! Slowly means you won't warp your good pot by lowering the temperature too fast. Just covered the meat for now. Now Into the pot I tossed all my veggies and some ketchup. About 1/2 cup to start and then covered all those with water.
Spices go in now. I chose more salt and pepper, garlic, paprika, bay leaf, some soy sauce and some Worchestershire and of course a little brown sugar.
Simmer, simmer, simmer for five or six hours.
I made what's called a 'Rue'. Equal parts of butter and flour all mashed in together. You see, flour won't melt into water, but it will mix into grease, (the butter,) and then melt into the stew.
Now, I slowly add some hot stew stuff into the butter to get it melting and then stir away so it won't all cook into clods in the stew. I was mostly successful with just a few lumps that nobody would notice. This is for me and Dick after all, not company!
This is a good part! I had a roll of frig biscuits that I was going to use for the coffee cake and thought? I'd like some biscuits please with my stew momma! So I just laid them all around the top of my pot. Put the whole thing in my pre heated 350 degree oven until they were baked!
Spooned out into a bowl. A little butter on my biscuit and WOW! A great dinner!
Huge, hearty hunks of meat and veggies!
Perfect for our winter dinner and lots left over for lunches!
