My fiance and I had his grandma, Bea, and my mom, Val, over for dinner this past Friday. They’ve never met, and with all of the wedding planning we thought we would get them together. We discussed going out for dinner, but decided to eat in, as it would be more comfortable and, let’s be honest, cheaper! Since we’re planning a wedding that has come into play a lot lately!
I wasn’t sure what to make, considered enchiladas, but then decided to make something more traditional and kind of comforting: stew! When we go to grandmas for dinner she always makes comforting, traditional meals; roast beef, lasagna, pork chops with mushroom cream sauce, etc…so I wanted to make something that fit into these meals.
I’ve only made beef stew once; in school, and that was a portion for two people, and I didn’t have all of the ingredients at home needed, so this was going to be a bit of an experiment. I looked at my recipe from school and in one of my cookbooks and basically refreshed my memory!
I decided on a simple beef stew with potatoes, mushrooms, onions, peas, corn and carrots. The peas, corn and carrots I used were a frozen vegetable mix, but they worked out okay. I was disappointed because I had hoped to use pearl onions, parsnip and button mushrooms, but the grocery store had none of these!
As I was making the stew I was remembering the proper steps we learned in school for making stew, as well as the steps in the Rouxbe online videos we watched as part of our curriculum. The first thing to remember was to pat the meat dry, then season it and then brown the meat in batches, making sure to not over crowd the pan.
Browning the meat in batches.
After all of the meat was browned I removed it from the pan and sauteed the onions until translucent.
Sauteing the onions
When the onions were nice and soft I singed (san-jayed) the pan with rice flour. This is a way to thicken the stew without adding a traditional roux.
Adding the flour
I continued by deglazing with some red wine. But not before slicing my thumb on the wrapper on the neck of the bottle!
The evil wine bottle!
Deglazing with red wine
Unfortunately I didn’t have any beef stock at home, so I had to use water and beef bouillon. I thought about using chicken stock that I have and adding the beef bouillon, but I wasn’t sure how the flavours would work. So I added the water and bouillon, then the mushrooms, vegetables, potatoes and the meat. I seasoned the stew with salt, pepper and thyme.
The final product simmering away.
The stew turned out all right. I’m not really the biggest fan of stew, but I thought it was okay. Everyone enjoyed it, but I thought it needed some more seasoning. I think the fake beef stock probably didn’t contribute much flavour; if I had used real stock the stew probably would have had a more rich flavour.
I’m not sure if I’ll make this stew again, but if I do I will definitely use real stock, as well as some more seasoning.
