Mmm.
Now I want to make a bolognese-type ragu. I’ve got ground beef, red wine, bacon, and carrots. But I’ve already got dinner planned. Maybe tomorrow.
This weekend’s stew recipe:
Chunk up a bunch of turnip, rutabaga, potato, carrot, celery and onion. Add to crock-pot. Chunk a bunch of beef. Brown in skillet, then add to pot. Add beef stock. Glug in some red wine. Mince some garlic, savory, and a habanero pepper and add to pot. Pepper the bejesus out of the contents. Add a bay leaf. Cook in pot until the smell drives you mad with hunger. For the last hour of cooking, add some mushrooms and some quartered tomatoes. Serve with crusty bread and a good red wine. Belch.
I have a wierd personal taste thing. If My stew has tomatoes then it needs some red wine. But in stew without tomatoes Wine doesn’t taste quite right so I need dark beer in there.
That reminds me, I haven’t made Beef Bourguignon in ages. It’s time to get out the stew pot.
Make it today and eat it tomorrow. Bolognese always tastes better after a day or two, when all the flavours mellow out and blend together. Nom nom nom.
I’ve got a pot of stewed beef happily simmering away. This is a recipe I’ve sort of settled on lately, though it’s never the same twice:
- brown stewing beef cubes.
- put the beef in a saucepan and fill it most of the way up with V-8 low-sodium veggie cocktail.
- Add some pureed vegetables (I usually use the little baby food jars) and spices - ground pepper, parsley flakes, oregano flakes, thyme flakes, basil flakes, parsley flakes, dried minced onion, caraway seed.
- Simmer all day. (Five hours? scoff
) Add more liquid as needed - usually I can’t fit all of a huge bottle of V-8 into the saucepan at once until it’s reduced some, and then once the V-8 is all in I add bovril water. Some tomato sauce works too, but not too much or it seems to change the consistency of the liquid too much. - Add some canned beef gravy at the end, when what remains of the V-8 sauce is fairly thick, mix well, and heat on low until the gravy is warmed.
- Use like a sauce, serving it over cooked pasta, rice, or potatoes.
Not a traditional stew I know, but nummy!
I made the veal stew today. One chopped onion, three cloves of garlic sauteed in olive oil, then browned two pounds of veal. Cut up two carrots and two potatoes, then added an 8oz can of tomato sauce, refilled the can with chicken stock and dumped that in. Simmered for an hour and a half. I forgot to buy bread to go with it, but I’ve got two containers set aside for later.
I bought some celeriac so I could make some stew. Tomorrow, I’ll get to smell it cooking. Delicious.