Just the weather for stew

StrawberryYogurt

I always add a gloop of bovril to my stews to, yum yum!

Pink.

Hi shiningdove,

This thread has lots of recipes and advice on making stew:

Just the weather for stew

I'll add your thread to that one later to keep the replies together.

Pink

frugal6

A few tablespoons of soy sauce adds a nice flavour

Sunnyday

I love beef stew made in the pressure cooker, i dissolve a beef stock cube in the water that stands in the bottom so that all the lovely flavour is forced through the veg with the steam YUM.
I always add celery too, i`m not that keen on it but it adds such a lot to the flavour.

I`m hungry now
SD

Apricot

A big squeeze of HP sauce in mine! For veg I use swede, carrots, potato, leeks & parsnip & I've absolutely got to have dumplings. Only recently realised how easy they were to make!

Idiophreak

Pretty much what the others have said, really, brown some meat in a pan, chuck in some veg (whatever's about), chuck in some stock, maybe a little bit of gravy powder, maybe a splash of wine, leave for a couple of hours. If you can make dumplings, so much the better. Real easy. Real tasty.

mrbadexample

I've already asked all the stupid questions here.

melli_2

...but I've not made one before...

I have one of these with a lid can I use that in the oven?

I also have beef cubes that I want to use, carrots, potatoes, leeks, onions and dried mushrooms (a tiny bit of red pepper too). What else will I need? I'm not sure as I've not made a stew before so I don't really know how to adapt it to what I have

Butterfly_Brain

You have a good base there for a stew - The beauty of a stew is that you can put anything in.

The dish is just right.

Brown your onions first then put them to one side, pop some flour and seasoning into a bag and give it a good shake to coat the meat then fry to seal the juices in the meat.
Chop the veg and put everything into the dish. Make up the stock cubes with somee boiling water and pour over the meat and veg stir it in well put the lid on and pop in a low oven for a couple of hours.
Be careful with potatoes as they can go mushy so I would add them about 45 mins before serving or cook them seperately.

maman

melli wrote: »

...but I've not made one before...

I have one of these with a lid can I use that in the oven?

I also have beef cubes that I want to use, carrots, potatoes, leeks, onions and dried mushrooms (a tiny bit of red pepper too). What else will I need? I'm not sure as I've not made a stew before so I don't really know how to adapt it to what I have

What people call 'stew' can vary so much. You seem to have all the right ingredients (assume you have some stewing beef too?).

Where I come from we would just put all the veg (perhaps not the peppers and mushrooms - too exotic:p) roughly chopped into a saucepan with the meat and a stock cube and seasoning and simmer it on the hob for hours until the meat was tender. This gives you a thin 'juice' with lots of yummy veg plus the meat. It's similar to the French pot au feu.

Alternatively you might mean more of a beef casserole with a thick gravy. To do this, cut your meat in cubes and toss in flour/cornflour and brown in oil in a frying pan. Transfer to your (lovely retro) casserole dish. Then soften your onions in the same frying pan, add leeks, mushrooms, carrots ( peppers if you want) and stock. You might also might add some red wine as well as stock and a couple of tbsps of worcestershire sauce/tomato puree plus some mixed herbs. Put all of this in a fairly low oven for 2-2.5 hours. One way of thickening it is to add a tablespoon of cornflour mixed in water. This is a very rough description, if you google beef casserole or boeuf bourguignon (sp?) then you'll get the general picture.

HTH