Beef Stew For A Crowd

With Bev coming home on Saturday and friends Joe and Kathy coming on Friday, I wanted enough food on hand for several days without cooking.  I wanted to use on-hand beef so I found one skirt and two flank steaks in the freezer totaling five pounds.  So, I scaled up a recipe that we like from Taste Of Home to get the following.  Since my meat was thinner than a roast, I cooked it differently than the original recipe.

The Best Beef Stew – Makes about 18 servings 

Ingredients:

3/4 lb. Bacon (our addition)

5 pounds beef of choice, trimmed & cut into 1” pieces

S&P to taste

1½ c. flour for dredging

1½ t. smoked paprika

Vegetable oil as needed

7 T. tomato paste

3 T. herbs de Provence

6 garlic cloves, minced

2 c. dry red wine 

6 c. beef broth

1½ t. dried rosemary

1½ T. Worcestershire

6 bay leaves

9 cups cubed peeled potatoes

2¾ c. coarsely chopped onions

1 bag frozen pearl onions

6 c. sliced carrots

6 T. cold water

5 T. cornstarch

3 c. frozen peas 

Directions:

1. In a large Dutch oven or soup pot, brown the bacon until crisp and remove to a bowl - leave the bacon fat.

2. Lay the steak in a single layer on a pan or cutting board and season with S&P.

3. Mix the flour and paprika in a shallow pan and dredge the steak pieces one at a time when ready to cook.

4. Cook each steak until well browned on both sides and remove to a plate.

5. When all meat is cooked, let them cool a little then cut into 1” squares. As expected, the meat was very tough at this point.

6. When the meat is all removed from the pan, add the tomato paste, Herbes de Provence and garlic; cook until fragrant and color starts to darken slightly.

7. Slowly add the wine and deglaze the pan, scraping up all of the fond from the pan bottom and cook until mixture just comes to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until reduced by one fourth. I used my flat ended fish spatula to scrape up the fond.

8. Stir in broth, the rosemary, worcestershire, bay leaves, bacon, and beef.

9. Adjust seasonings. It took 1¼ hours to this point.

10. Bring to a boil reduce heat; cover and simmer for 3 hours.

11. Add potatoes, onions and carrots, cover and cook for another hour.  

12. In a small bowl, combine water and cornstarch. Stir into stew. Bring to a boil; add frozen peas. Cook, stirring, until thickened, about 5 minutes.

 The Verdict:

We all thought it was very good and will keep using this recipe.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

12/17 & 12/18/21 event dates