Just the weather for stew

Apricot

What I do for a stew is basically cook all of the veg in a saucepan until soft-ish. Then slice an onion and put that in the casserole dish with cooked veg and raw beef. I dissolve a beef stock cube in cold water and pour that over the top and then add brown sauce and a spoon full of gravy granules. I pop it in the oven for about 1.5 - 2 hours and voila.

Tastes delish and very little labour involved!

wssla00

Or what about a Sausage stew? I LOVE it and it's really cheap, just same as above but with Sausages.

Make sure you brown off the sausages first or they look a wee bit gross.

melli_2

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

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.

Thank you especially about the potatoes! I shall leave them until the end!

melli_2

[QUOTE=maman;30227257]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[/QUOTE]

That's it stewing beef! I got it reduced and it's been sat in my freezer for ages
Think I will go for a beef casserole type of stew

melli_2

wssla00 wrote: »

Or what about a Sausage stew? I LOVE it and it's really cheap, just same as above but with Sausages.

Make sure you brown off the sausages first or they look a wee bit gross.

I do have sausages but they are ear marked for a fennel and sausage pasta dish

Pink.

Hi melli,

As your thread has dropped down the Old Style board I've added it to the main thread on making stew which has lots more recipes and ideas that should help.

Pink

maman

melli wrote: »

I do have sausages but they are ear marked for a fennel and sausage pasta dish

I'm sure your recipe is lovely but try googling Tana Ramsey's sausage casserole. We're loving that. I didn't add chorizo (too fatty and I didn't have any) and I used ordinary bacon instead of pancetta. Yum! Yum!

summer-rain_3

hi all,
i have been given 2 large packs of diced beef that have to be used by the 27th so i am planning on using up all my veg and making a stew tomorrow.
i have a really big cassarole dish so am thinking one meal for tomorrow night and one for the freezer.
i also have some small one portion size cassarole dishes, similar to souffle dishes just a bit wider and am wondering if its possible to use some of the stew mix as a base for pie filling and then use up a bit of puff pastry i have left as a pie top?
do you think this will work?
i'd like to get 3 meals from this beef if possible.

thanks in advance for any help.

CCP

That should work perfectly - a pie is just stew with a lid on, after all! The only difference might be making the gravy a bit thicker for the pie than for the stew, but that's a personal taste thing.

zippychick

Hi Summer rain:beer:

yes that would work. In fact, you can really put anything you so desire into a pie! They are pretty versatile

There is a whole thread about stew and how to make it

Just the weather for stew

I will add your thread to that one later to keep all the ideas together

thanks
Zip