Recipe: Homemade Beef Stew

It was a rainy cool day in Western New York. Our autumn and especially November have been a little nicer than usual. During the cooler autumn and winter months I enjoy cooking.

 Today I had a bunch of errands to run around town.  I took care of those then grabbed some wine and some stew meat and put together a pot of my beef stew. This is the perfect meal on a cool autumn or just plain cold winter day.

Ingredients 

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 pound mushroom (more if you like The Doods a big fan of the shrooms :-)
• 2 cups chopped onion (about an onion and half chopped however you like)
• 4 garlic cloves (smashed or chopped)
• ½ cup all purpose flour
• 2 lbs beef cut into stew cubes
• ¼ to ¾ teaspoon salt (to taste)
• 1 cup dry red wine (I use a cheap burgundy but not too cheap)
• 2 14oz cans beef stock (unless you have your own)
• 1 tablespoon thyme
• 1 or 2 bay leaves
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• 5 or 6 chopped carrots (more if you like carrots)
• 5 or 6 potatoes cut into quarters

 Preparations: 

 Pour a little olive oil into the bottom of a rather large pot. I'm no Martha Stewart over here, so I just used the biggest one I had in the cupboard. DO NOT USE A NON STICK COATED PAN You have to fit all the above ingredients in it.

 Anyway, once you select your pot, pour a little olive oil into the bottom on medium high heat and get it nice and hot. Dump in your mushrooms and sauté for around 5 minutes or until they begin to brown. Once brown, dump them temporarily into a large bowl. If there's mushroom juice in the bottom of the pan, pour that into a coffee cup and save it, that's great flavoring there.

 Now dump another squirt of olive oil into the bottom of the pan, around another tablespoon, and take your onions and sauté around 10 minutes. I chop the onions in quarters, then let them fall apart while frying. When the onions get a nice golden color, toss your mashed up or chopped garlic cloves in there and cook for an additional minute or two. Now add the onion garlic mixture to your mushrooms.

 Remove your pot from the heat for a minute, and dump a ½ cup of flour into a bowl or shallow pan and then take your meat and dredge it through the flour. You're basically just coating the meat with flour. This will help thicken the broth as it cooks and gives it a real nice flavor.

 Now return your pan to a medium heat burner, add another dollop of olive oil , around 1 tablespoon and brown your meat in the pan. You might want to brown half, and then the other half if it won't all fit at once. Sprinkle with salt and pepper as it cooks. When meat is browned, add it to the mushroom mixture.

 Now the bottom of the pan should have a nice brown coating on it. Don't clean that out. That's all flavor! Add your 1 cup of wine and of course pour a glass for yourself. You deserve it. Cheers! Dump in the thyme and then take a spoon, or spatula and loosen and scrape all those brown bits on the bottom of the pan. DON'T DO THIS WITH A NON STICK PAN!

Once you've scraped up all the loosened bits of flavor add your beef broth, your mushroom juice if you have any, bay leaves, and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil then add the meat, onion, garlic and mushroom mixture to the broth. Cover and simmer about an hour on a medium low setting.

 After the hour is up, add your chopped carrots, and quartered potatoes. Cook for about 45 minutes covered then another ½  hour uncovered stirring occasionally. This will thicken the broth and give it a nice stew texture. That's it you're done. You should be fairly buzzed on your wine now, and have a nice case of the munchies.

 Enjoy!

Beef Stew Finished and Ready To Eat!

Serve with biscuits and beer or wine. The Dood buys the cheap .75 cent generic biscuits in a tube and cooks them in the oven.