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Old Fashioned Beef Stew

Course Soup
Keyword beef stew
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Total Time 3 hours 25 minutes
Servings 8

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs beef stew meat
  • 1 cup flour
  • 3 tbs Italian spice blend
  • 2 large onions chopped
  • 4 ribs celery chopped
  • 3 large carrots chopped but not peeled
  • 3 medium red potatoes cubed
  • 1 small rutabaga peeled and cubed
  • 3 small turnips peeled and cubed
  • 4 tbs tomato paste
  • 1 cup red wine
  • 4 cloves garlic diced
  • 2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 dry bay leaves
  • 5 cups homemade beef bone broth or store bought
  • Salt and lots of pepper

Instructions

  1. Trim you beef stew meat into equal sized chunks, often the meat you get at the store as stew meat is not uniform. Heat a generous drizzle of olive oil over medium heat in your stew pot. Mix the flour, Italian spice and 2 tbs of salt together and put in a shallow bowl or plate. Dredge the beef in the flour mix, shake off excess. Working in batches brown the beef and set aside. Add more olive oil as needed to the pan.
  2. Once the beef is all browned add the onion, celery and carrot to the pot. Sprinkle the veggies with salt. Cook for about 10 minutes stirring often, and scrapping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
  3. When the onions are a little bit transparent add the tomato paste and stir until it is fragrant and mixed through. Then add the garlic, cook for about 2 minutes and pour in the wine and Worcestershire. Stir, be sure anything stuck to the bottom of the pot is dissolved. Add the other cubed vegetables, beef broth, ground pepper, and 2 bay leaves to the pot.
  4. Once the stew reaches a soft boil turn the pot down to a simmer and let cook for 2-3 hours on the low/simmer setting, stir it occasionally. Leave the lid off unless it seems that too much liquid has evaporated. If you don’t want to leave a pot on the stove unattended a crockpot would work great for this and you will not need to stir.
  5. Before serving taste the stew and adjust the flavors, add more salt or Worcestershire as needed.