Red Wine Beef Stew-For the Hungry Hearted




              Hello! Thanks for stopping in! I wanted to start out by saying,  I'll be the first to admit that I am definitely not a chef. I mean I make a decent chicken tortilla soup, my buttermilk biscuits are satisfactory, and I only just recently mastered chicken & dumplings so I have a long way to go but I wanted to share a beef stew recipe that my husband and I love. 

I've made beef stew plenty of times but never with red wine. My husband is usually the cook of this recipe but since he had to work all day, I thought I'd give it a try myself.

 For this dish I followed another recipe that can be found online but I tweaked it here and there and changed the proportions a bit. The ingredients list below are in the proportions that I used but feel free to change it as needed. I don't think it's too picky. 


INGREDIENTS

2 1/2lb Beef Chuck Roast or Pre cut stew meat
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups dry red wine ( I used Merlot)
4 cups of chicken broth
3 to 4 tablespoons of olive oil 
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 medium yellow onion 
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs of thyme 
1 package of regular carrots (about two pounds), peeled and cut into 1 to 2 inch pieces. 
1 1/2 pounds baby white potatoes, halved

The ingredients I didn't already have and actually had to purchase are pictured below 



PREPARATION:

Preheat the oven to 325°F

If you didn't buy precut stew meat go ahead and cut your roast into 2 inch pieces. 





Season the meat with salt and pepper, place in a large bowl, and toss with the flour.





Heat the oil in a large pot(the recipe I followed called for a dutch oven but I don't have one so I just used a regular cooking pot), with a tight-fitting lid, over medium-high heat.  

   Cook the meat, in batches, until slightly browned on all sides, transferring the pieces to a plate as they are browned. 

At this point I realized I forgot to buy the tomato paste.  I put the plate of browned meat into the fridge and decided the pot needed to be cleaned before the next step because the bottom had gotten kind of dark, which probably wouldn't have happened if you were to use a dutch oven like the recipe said to. Oops. After cleaning out the pot, I headed to our closest store which is a Walgreens and prayed that they had tomato paste because I really didn't feel like going back to Albertsons. Lo and behold Walgreens does, in fact, carry tomato paste and that brings us to the next step.

In the same pot you browned the meat in, add the wine, tomato paste, broth, onion, bay leaves, thyme, and 2 of the carrots, then bring to a boil. 

Those colors 💜


I then transferred the liquid from this pot...


To this pot...(way easier said than done 😆) Because I didn't think the pink one would have held up well in the oven. 


Once the liquid was transferred, I returned the meat to the new pot as well.

The recipe I was following stated that the meat should be "barely" submerged in liquid but ya win some, ya lose some. 💁



Place the lid on, and transfer to the oven. Cook for 2 hours.

Remove from the oven, add the potatoes and the remaining carrots to the pot, cover, and return to the oven. Cook until the meat and vegetables are fork-tender, about 1 hour more.

And there you have it! A beef stew that your household is sure to love.

Our home smelled so good and my husband was full & happy. Win/Win.

If you decide to give this recipe a try or if there is anything you'd add or change, I'd love to know! 

Thanks for reading!

-MC♥