Hey everyone welcome back! Today at the grocery store I came across what
they called boneless beef finger meat, and it is essentially the muscle between
the ribs on on a cow. I've used it before for soups; our beef and barley
soup with this is absolutely amazing! So I thought you know the temperatures a little
bit colder, let's make a stew recipe. And the first step to making a stew is cutting
it into chunks. And the next step is to brown the beef. A little bit of oil in
the bottom, today I'm using grapeseed oil. I like it because it has no flavour and a
high smoke point. If I had any rendered beef fat that would be my first choice
for this. Grapeseed is my second choice but really any fat you're comfortable with.
In goes the beef a little at a time you want it to brown not boil, and of
course if you forgot the salt and pepper like I did it's okay to put it in now.
Plenty of opportunities along the way to add more seasoning with a stew this is
a long slow cook.
While the meat is browning I will prepare the vegetables, and that's three
or four onions depending on how big they are. Since this is a long slow cook I
don't bother cutting them really fine it's a stew I like I like all of the
vegetables to be fairly large chunks. So depending on the onions I might quarter
them or eighth them. Carrots; again really big chunks and I'm not one for
peeling carrots so I just slice them into really big rounds.
And same with the celery really big chunks.
Of course for your stew cut them however you like if you think that's too big then
cut them in half. You know really cooking is all about pleasing yourself.
So let's check on the beef - we could go a little bit farther, but today I think it's
fine. Long slow cook in the oven it's gonna
bring out all of those flavours.
Next in is some tomato paste.
Plop that right in and get it cooking with the beef. Next up is my favourite
ingredient for beef stews, and that is Marmite. And I know a lot of people don't
like Marmite. And I know you might have heard me say this before we're gonna put
in a really good dollop. I hate Marmite on its own tastes
horrible to me, absolutely horrible to me but you put it in something like this
stew and it just brings out all of the other flavors and makes them absolutely
incredible! And as you can see we've got some great colour in there now cooking
the tomato sauce with the Marmite and the beef before we put in the rest of
the ingredients really helps deepen the flavour. And next in is some chicken stock,
and yes of course if you've got homemade beef stock use homemade beef stock I
don't have any homemade beef stock so I'm using homemade chicken stock and my
order of importance for this type of dish is homemade beef to go with beef
then homemade chicken to go with beef and then store-bought chicken to go with
beef before I will ever buy a box or a jar of store-bought beef stock. There's
some flavour in every store bought beef stock that I've ever had that I just don't
like I think it's horrible so I will always choose chicken before I choose
purchased beef. Anyway enough about that; give this stir and at this point we can
start adding in some of the other aromatics. So I have I have some thyme I'm
gonna throw the whole sprigs in. A couple of cloves of garlic and I'm gonna
crush those in. So the stock and all of the beef juice has come up to a boil at
this point which is what we're looking for. So in goes the garlic; give it a
crush scrape it ah there you go. Next up is some beer and I've got
a local Ontario brewery stout from broadhead brewery darkhorse stout I
think this is one of the ones we used in the 24 beer project. There's a very
famous stout from Ireland that you could use if you wanted to, but you want a
really dark beer low in the hops of course. Red wine would be really good in
this in this stew recipe as well so just put it enough. hmm
it's pretty good guys. So now in goes the veg and we just plop it in and you'll
notice I don't put any potatoes in my my beef stew recipe. I sort of go back and forth
between putting potatoes in and then serving this over mashed potatoes and I
think today I'm going to serve this over mashed potatoes.
Give it a stir we'll bring this up to a boil. I feel like I spend most of my time
cleaning this kitchen, and I just saw a Leon Lush video on on how cleaning
videos clean up on YouTube. So I thought I'd I thought I'd throw in a little bit
of cleaning for him. This has come to a boil now and put on a lid, and put that
in a low oven 300 - 325º for three or four hours. And of course this could be done
in a crock-pot or a slow cooker. Especially if you have one of the ones
with a metal insert that you can Brown in. But if you have one that you can't Brown
it's probably not all that terribly important, you'll get almost the same
flavour just by throwing everything in and turning it on for ten hours anyway.
Come on back and see what happens.
Glen we got two parts going on here. Yeah so this is the beef stew and we have to
serve it over mashed potatoes. Oh serve up the mashed potatoes and let's go. yeah
that's funny I am as a little kid mmm every Friday night the the family that
took care of me mmm after school this is what they would
serve mashed potato and mashed potatoes and us do it was really good this is
like a little homecoming for me nice so this this do is really thin the this
it's more soupy than Stewie too because it's chunky
you could definitely thicken it up with some flour or corn starch but then it
doesn't just mixes in so nicely I know I like I like how it flavors the mashed
potatoes I'm so this is made with a dark stout ah well that would explain that
flavour mmm the dark stout hmm that mashed potato recipe is quite possibly the best
mashed potato recipe the world has ever known! Did you make that
recipe Glen? Good oh good for you! I did it so there's a lot of things you
could do with this stew at the end you could put in
peas and corn if you wanted. if you wanted extra vegetables you you change
the flavouring I mean it's you could put the potatoes in it even though I like it
served over mashed potatoes mm-hmm I think this really adds to it it
Don't look at the panettone I can't ask about the panettone this is
about the stew recipe don't ask me what the panettone. but it's right there Glen
when do we get to eat the panettone we'll go there next okay I have a dinner
first so give this a try I think you'll really like it