In episode 067 we are making a Five Hour Beef Stew for dinner. This is a super easy “dump and bake” recipe that takes a little time to bake but NO time to put together. Stew meat is a super economical cut of beef that cooks up fall-apart-tender in the 5 hour cooking time. Pair this with some warm ciabatta bread for an amazingly cozy dinner.
Transcript
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Intro: Hey, hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: You guys, I am so excited for this recipe today. So if you’re looking at this recipe or if you’re listening to this, it’s probably wintertime or it’s getting cold, and you need some kind of cozy comfort food to eat for dinner. Today we are making a five hour dutch oven beef stew. It’s going to perfume your house like a pot of beef potpourri, and you are going to absolutely love it. \
This is okay. I hate this term. Are you ready for it? But this is what it is. It’s a dump and bake recipe. I hate that term, but that’s what it is. You are going to dump all of the ingredients right into your dutch oven, pop the lid on, put it in your oven, and forget about it for about five hours. It comes out as this luscious, delicious, rich beef stew that’s full of veggies and a tomato beef based broth that’s thick and the stew meat cooks down into these absolutely impossibly tender chunks. It is excellent served with either saltine crackers. So if you like to crumble up saltine crackers in your stew, that’s what I like to do. Or you could serve some crusty warm ciabatta bread on the side, mwuh! Delicious.
Tips and Tricks: Okay, so a few tips with this recipe. The base liquid of the recipe is actually just tomato juice. However, if you have a V8 and you want to use that, that works too. This is a super flexible, kind of rustic recipe that is super popular in the Midwest. So you know we are flexible. The other ingredient that you will need is stew meat. Usually in the grocery store, it’s super inexpensive, super economical. You’ll find it cubed into one or two inch pieces, and it will be called either lean stew meat or just stew meat, and it usually comes in like one to one and a half pound packages.
This is not a cut of meat that you can cook quickly or grill or pan sear. This is a super tough, cheap cut of meat that needs a really long and slow cooking time. However, you can also use it in the Instant Pot in my Beef and Barley Stew, which is one of the most popular recipes on Mom’s Dinner.
The last ingredient that I want to talk about is kind of a weird one, and you may need to have somebody help you at the grocery store to find it. They’re called tapioca pearls. You don’t want to buy tapioca pudding. They’re their own pearls, and it will say tapioca pearls on them. It will be medium tapioca pearls or large tapioca pearls. Now you don’t want to get boba size tapioca pearls, but tapioca pearls. You can usually find them in the pudding aisle or in the baking aisle, which actually usually is the same aisle. Head down that aisle. See if you can find them. If not, grab somebody at the grocery store. Tell them what you’re making and they should be able to help you find those. If you cannot find them, I’m going to link tapioca Pearls on Amazon so that you could order them if you need to.
One piece of equipment that you’re going to want to make sure you have for this recipe is probably a Dutch oven with a lid. A six quart dutch oven with a lid will be perfect here. You can obviously buy the super expensive ones like Staub or Le Creuset. But Lodge is super affordable. They literally are experts in cast iron and they make beautiful enamel dutch ovens, so you can go that route and spend a lot less money.
Dutch Oven Beef Stew Recipe: Let’s get on to making this super easy five hour Dutch Oven Beef Stew recipe. I told y’all it’s going to be super easy. This isn’t going to take very long. Are you ready? You’re going to preheat your oven to 250 degrees. Like I said, this is going to go low and slow. Then in your large Dutch oven, you’re going to add in one and a half pounds of beef stew meat, two cups of russet potatoes that are peeled and diced. One cup of celery that’s cut into about one inch pieces. One and a half cups of carrots that are peeled and cut into one to one and a half inch pieces. A large onion that’s cut into about one or two inch pieces. Then you’re going to add in three cups of tomato juice, two tablespoons each of Worcestershire sauce, sugar, and those tapioca pearls that we talked about. One teaspoon of kosher salt. Half a teaspoon of black pepper and half a teaspoon of chili powder and smoked paprika. Then you’ll pop in two bay leaves, give it a little stir, pop the lid on, and put it right in the oven.
Now, usually when I make this, I like to stir it one or two times while it’s cooking. Just so that as that sauce thickens, you can make sure that all the veggies and the meat are staying down in that liquid. But that’s it. Once it comes out, it’s going to be smoking hot. You’ll want to let it cool for like 15 to 20 minutes before you actually serve the stew.
Like I said at the beginning of this episode, it is excellent served with saltine crackers or warmed up ciabatta bread. If you want to add a green side salad with a vinaigrette dressing, you could do that.
So that does it for today’s episode of Let’s Make Dinner. As always, I will link all of the recipes right in the show notes for you so you can find it when you’re ready to save it, make it, pin it. Whatever you want to do, it’ll be there for you. I would also love to have all of you dinner makers out there, rate and review the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast in your preferred podcast player. That will just help us as a newer show be found by your peers, which is always good.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your Dinner time a little easier. See ya.
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