delicious beef stew

So this is my non-foodie-compliant 1.5 hour stew recipe. It's for anytime you desperately want stew but want to make it fast, easy, and cheap. All but the one hour simmering can be done in stages ahead of time. This one can take me a week if I really spread it out.

I'm mentioning this today because I just made it and it's fresh in my memory.



Lazy Beef Stew

Ingredients
1 lb beef (any beef not ground)
2-2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp salt (or 1 Tb, I don't know your life)
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder or crush some garlic, whatever.
4 cups of broth or four cubes of bouillon with four cups of water
1 cup of milk
6 potatoes (best choice: potatoes on sale)
1 onion
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 can of corn (alternate: frozen)
1 can of peas (alternate: frozen)
1 can of stewed or chopped tomatoes (with chilis for a kick)

Instructions

1.) Make four cups of beef bouillon in microwave. 5 minutes max.

2.) Pour cup of milk and set within max reach range from primary burner of use.

3.) Cut your beef to half inch square types or pentagons or some shit.

No, put down the knife: use scissors like a civilized person. You're welcome.

4.) Mix flour, salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder (NOT WITH CRUSHED GARLIC ALTERNATIVE) into large ziploc bag. Add meat, seal and shake.

5.) Pour about a quarter cup of oil in large soup pot/tureen/thing and set heat at around 4-6 (mediumish) and wait five minutes. Add beef enough to keep separate and set timer for three minutes. Flip and three minutes. Remove to bowl nearby somewhere or plate.

You'll note beef gets smaller. At the first flip add more beef and simplify your life already. This should take you fifteen minutes or less.

6.) While doing the beef thing, your bouillon should be done. Take it out.I

7.) Cut up your potatoes into sixths or eighths and place in microwavable bowl with enough water to cover them. Cover with plastic wrap and microwave for roughly six minutes.

(You can't do this with scissors. Not yet: give me time.)

8.) Cut up any vegetables that need cutting and open cans that need opening. Reserve for [spoiler].

9.) Your beef better be done by now.

10.) Add about two tablespoons of butter into beefy oil and mix mix mix, scraping the bottom of the pan to get the beefy goodness.

11.)Don't even look at the cornstarch; we're doing this old school.

12.) Get your ziploc of flour. Add to oil while stirring rapidly. Keep adding until it makes a non-liquid mass that repulses you on a primal level. Add a cup of bouillion while stirring rapidly. It turns liquid and then solid like the blob.

13.) Don't be afraid. KEEP FUCKING STIRRING LIKE IT IS THE BLOB AND YOUR LIFE IS AT STAKE.

14.) Add second cup of bouillon. It holds liquidy form for longer, good; DO NOT STOP STIRRING. With your free hand, retrieve the milk and dump it in. KEEP STIRRING. If you stop it will become tiny horrible solid grease and flour balls floating in a liquidy mass, it's horrific.

15.) Keep adding bouillon until your liquid is the consistency you want and then take it another liquidy notch down; remember some of this will boil off and keep slowly thickening.

16.) Don't stop stirring.

17.) Add meat while you are still stirring.

18.) SPOILER TIME! Add non-potato vegetables while stirring. Including the crushed garlic if that's how you do. While stirring.

19.) ...didn't I tell you to keep stirring?

20.) Add potatoes and keep stirring

21.) Put on lid and set timer for one hour. You can stop stirring now.

21.) In an hour, eat.

Alternatives

Switch up the vegetables, add mushrooms, go crazy!

Comments

[lillian13]

How can this be a real recipe you use? I see no mention of an Instant Pot!

instant pot

[devon]

Haha! Good point!

Just make it all in the Instant pot, with all the ever-loving stirring and everything. Use the low or medium "saute."

When you have dumped everything in and stopped stirring, I would say ... probably manual low-pressure for about 5-8 minutes, depending on how big your pieces of meat and potato are. Release the pressure! Seriously, at 10 minutes (as you probably already know,) those potatoes are going to be mush. I always use less time than is recommended in the online recipes.

[seperis]

I can't get the liquid consistency right in the pot. Soup, yes; stew so far, it's either soupy-thin or gravy-thick.

[domarzione]

Do you make a slurry after it's been under pressure?

[seperis]

...tell me more.

[domarzione]

For this purpose, cornstarch + a little liquid = slurry. You can use some of the liquid from the pot, which is ideal but note it's harder to whisk cornstarch into hot liquid and you'll have to work to kill the lumps.

[But definitely use cornstarch or tapioca starch (or potato starch) as opposed to flour because the flour will give it a raw-flour taste because you're not cooking it. Flour is better for pies as a thickener.]

Once you make your slurry, introduce it back into the main pot slowly and stir. Stop when you reach the consistency desired.

[domarzione]

I, too, am a member of the cult of Instant Pot!

(Tonight I opened a cookbook I got for Chanukah and, without even trying it the way it was written, converted it to IP.)

But, as to actual content: thank you for turning making a roux into an exciting adventure.

[seperis]

Is that the fancy word? I HAVE ALWAYS WONDERED.

I love Instant Pot. It can do almost anything.

[domarzione]

Roux is indeed the word for when you add flour to fat, fry it, and then start adding liquid.

Oh, the things I have done with the IP. I love it for basic things like grains and beets and potatoes. I love it for making complicated things like saag paneer where I make both the saag and the paneer from scratch in the IP. I have a curious (to some) habit of asking for the carcass of the animal presented at dinner -- at Thanksgiving, I consider it payment for carving the beast -- so I can make stock. I might have even done this at a bridal shower in a restaurant.

[luminosity]

I was gonna say! When you make a roux, you're actually roasting the flour, but if you're going to take the time to make a roux, you're probably not going to want to make lazy stew with it. :) Here, a roux is the base for many recipes (Cajun), but we use cornstarch as a thickener for other things, like lemon custard and quickie gravy.

I don't have an Instant Pot. I don't think I could miss what I don't have, but I said the same thing before I got a portable vacuum cleaner, so... *shrug* Time will tell.