Slow-Cooker Beef Stew

This weekend I made a batch of my daddy's beef stew. I'm sure by now you've noticed that many of my recipes are "Daddy's such-and-such;" that's because he was the family chef when I was a kid and because he makes really good food. "Really good food" for him usually means that it is delicious, nutritious, and relatively cheap. "Relatively cheap" usually means high in veggies and low in meat (which also means healthy). This dish is nice for meat-loving folks because it tastes super meaty.

Of course, I have somewhat higher expectations for what my food should do for me--I not only want nutrition and calories to calm my ravenous tummy, but I also want to enjoy my food. You might even say that I want my food to be an "experience." Perhaps it is a difference in gender or generation, but I'm always willing to spend a little more money on my ingredients than he is (assuming I have the money). So I've posted both the Daddy version and the Julie version. His is the one to start with if you've never made a slow-cooker beef stew before and then make your own modifications (as I did) once you taste his. His is really, really good.

In this case, the recipe is budget friendly because of proportion. It is a 3-2-1 recipe: three pounds of the cheapest ingredient (starchy potatoes), two pounds of the next most expensive ingredient (carrots), and only one pound of the most expensive ingredient (beef). This is definitely a way to stretch a dollar for a meat lover. When I became a graduate student (read: poor), I stopped buying meat on a regular basis. I realized how much money we spent at Costco and regular markets buying things like steak, fish, and chicken (even in bulk) compared to the nutrition that you get from it. Despite what you might think, regular people who are not professional weight-lifters don't nutritionally need to eat a chunk (or even a sliver) of meat at every meal: there is a surprising amount of protein in rice, bread, cheese, and milk. Of course, if you avoid eating beans then you'll want to eat some meat to make sure you get all your essential amino acids. But that doesn't mean you need meat all the time. It took a little getting use-to for Dave, who was a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. The accountant in him made him a big fan of this change-- realizing we could save money (and spend some of it on yummier ingredients like fancy cheeses, exotic herbs, and more expensive produce) made it quite desirable. Now we hardly ever eat meat, except in dishes like this where it isn't the star but more of a supporting role.

Daddy's Beef Stew

• 3 lbs russet potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 3/4 inch pieces
• 2 lbs carrots, cut into 3/4 inch pieces
• 1 lb cheap beef, cut into 3/4 inch pieces (remove fat/cartilage first)
• 1 small chopped onion
• 1-2 chopped garlic cloves
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp summer savory (if you have it...I usually don't so I skip it)
• 3-4 bay leaves
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup cheap red wine (optional)
  
• water
  

Put flour in a bowl along with salt/pepper, mix. Dredge beef pieces in flour mixture. Fry floured beef pieces in hot pan with a few tablespoons of oil, cook until very brown (this caramelizes the flour/sugars on the beef, making it taste fantastic). Dump chopped veggies (potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic) into crock pot, add browned meat pieces. Dump remaining flour on top. Add thyme, (savory), and bay leaves on top. Pour red wine over to wash flour and seasonings down into the pot. Then add as much water as you need until the liquid just shows between the vegetables. Stir if you can (my pot is usually mighty full at this point so I just wait to stir it until it gets mushier...about 2 hours). Turn crock pot on to HIGH. Once it's bubbling, you can turn it down to LOW. (Or, if you are lucky enough to have an "auto shift" function on your pot, use that because it will automatically reduce the heat from high to low once it simmers. Very handy technology for those of us who literally want to set it and forget it.) Let it cook for about 24 hours (cut stuff into smaller pieces if you want it to be done sooner). Stir it on occasion (every few hours) if you remember.

Julie's Beef Stew
(Daddy says this version is "too rich for his blood"...but he's just crazy.) =)

• 3 lbs waxy potatoes (I use purple or red or those darling finger potatoes that are small enough I don't have to both cutting them), unpeeled, cut into 3/4 inch pieces
• 3 lbs carrots, cut into 3/4 inch pieces
• 1 lb cheap beef, cut into 3/4 inch pieces (remove fat/cartilage first)
• 1 medium chopped onion
• 2-3 chopped garlic cloves
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp summer savory
  
• 3-4 bay leaves
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 cup flour
• 1 750mL bottle of cheap red wine (not optional)
  

Prepare meat and veggies as above. Dump everything in the pot, as above. This time, pour in the whole bottle of red wine to wash flour and seasonings down into the pot. Then add as much water as you need until the liquid just shows between the vegetables (not much). Cook the same was as Daddy's version.

My favorite part of the beef stew is the carrots (especially when you increase the wine content) so you'll notice that I use equal parts of potatoes and carrots. I've also added quartered mushrooms, which is good but you want to make sure that you use strong flavored mushrooms, otherwise their flavor is lost (I don't know how much I used...I guess as many as I could afford and/or fit into the pot).

Of course you can add whatever other veggies to the stew that you want. I know Cracker Barrel restaurants use peas and stewed tomatoes in theirs and it is really good. I might try the tomato addition to this recipe sometime. My tomato-disliking husband wouldn't approve (although I guarantee he'd still devour it), but we all know my opinion about tomatoes: pretty much any savory dish is better when you add tomatoes.

The Julie version of this stew is freaking delicious (I swear I'm not biased...), especially when you have extra sour sourdough bread to dunk into the saucy goodness.

For those of you who don't cook with wine (for whatever reason), I recommend that you use it anyway, just for this dish. Because really, this stew is THAT much better with wine. Perhaps you could use a non-alcoholic cooking wine (which has seasonings added to it so just omit the garlic, salt, and pepper in the recipe) or a non-alcoholic wine like ARIEL (in which case you would still want to use the seasonings). In reality, all the alcohol will be cooked off by the time you're ready to eat the stew but I know some people simply won't purchase (let alone consume) wine at all.

Ok, just writing this has made my mouth water so I'm going to go warm up a big bowl of stew right now. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do!