This recipe makes beautiful slow cooked stew to serve over noodles or potatoes or even better filling for beef pies. I’ve taken my classic slow cooked beef stew recipe and added a Julia Child twist to it. One thing that makes Julia’s recipes taste fantastic is the separate cooking of key elements that are then combined at the end for maximum flavour. The recipe has 3 key processes: cook the beef, cook the onions and cook the mushrooms. These 3 elements are combined to make either fab stew or even better pie filling. I used my slow cooker for the beef but you could easily put it in the oven on a low heat. I do it in this in order: beef, onions, mushrooms.

Let’s get straight to the cooking.

Recipe

Ingredients – Main recipe

• 1.25-1.5 kilos of stewing beef
• flour for dusting, ground black pepper to taste
• olive oil
• 125 grams of lardons or chopped bacon
• 1 large onion, halved and sliced
• 3 tablespoons (45 ml) of brandy or cognac (I do use VSOP)
• 2 bay leaves
• a dozen whole black peppercorns
• 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary or 1 tsp of dried rosemary
• 250 mls concentrated beef stock
• 750 mls good red wine

Instructions – main recipe

1. Put slow cooker on high.
2. Dust the beef with flour and black pepper (use a ziplock bag or a shallow plate) and place in the slow cooker.
3. Heat the olive oil in a large flat bottomed skillet over medium to high heat. Add the lardons and brown slightly.
4. Halve the onion and mandolin into thin slices directly into the skillet. Soften until translucent.
5. Pour in the brandy, turn the heat to high and cook off the alcohol. When you can’t smell the alcohol, add the red wine and the beef stock. Again burn off the alcohol.
6. Prepare a bouquet garni with the bay leaves, peppercorns and rosemary. Add to the sauce.
7. Pour the sauce over the beef in the slow cooker. Cook on low/medium for 6 hours.
8. The sauce should be quite thick by the end of the cooking time. If not, drain off the sauce and thicken on the stove top with a beurre manie (you know that thing that shouldn’t work but does).
9. Combine the sauce, beef, onions and mushrooms (including cooking juices from both). Serve up over mashed potatoes or noodles. Or top with puff pastry and cook as pie.

Brown braised onions

Brown braised miniature onions

18-24 miniature onions

30 – 50 grams of butter, a shot of olive oil

125 mls of beef stock and red wine

A bouquet garni

1. Peel the onions.  This is annoying so use this blog, it works great. https://www.finedininglovers.com/article/how-to-peel-pearl-onions
2. Bring the butter and oil up to temperate in a skillet, add the onions and brown. 
3. You will need to roll them around in the butter and keep them moving.  They won’t be perfectly even in colour.
4. Add the liquid, salt and pepper to taste and the bouquet garni.  Simmer for 40/50 minutes.
5. Put to one side with their cooking liquid ready to combine in your beef stew.

Sauteed mushrooms

250 grams of quality small mushrooms (double this recipe if you have mushrooms lovers in your house)

30-40 grams of butter

Splash of olive oil

2 tablespoons of finely chopped shallots (optional)

1. Prep the mushrooms to a nice eating size, if small just remove stems, otherwise half or quarter.
2. Heat the butter and oil.
3. Add the mushrooms and shallots if using,
4. Sauté for 2-3 minutes until browned but don’t overcook. 
5. Put to one side ready to include in your beef stew.

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We’ve had a pretty good summer in the UK. Okay, an entire test (cricket match) was essentially rained off, but in general it’s been good. Plus a couple of weeks of Indian summer in September. But it’s all change now and we’ve gone roaring into autumn – cool, windy, frequently overcast. Time for the first log fires, turning the central heating on and to make some comfort food.

This recipe is an easy low input recipe that uses your slow cooker or a low oven. Fifteen minutes early in the day gets you classic comfort food for your supper. Cooking time is a 6 to 8 hours depending on your cooker. The ingredients are simple and there’s not much special prep required. I make this is big batches, it freezes beautifully. Home cooked portioned meals in the freezer are a gift to yourself.

I use beef shin, on the bone, sliced about two inches thick by my butcher. Any beef suitable for stewing will produce good stew and feel free to substitute it for the beef shin. However, the marrow in the bones gives a lovely unctuous texture to your finished stew. I find it easy to fish the bones out at the end with any sinew or connective tissue that hasn’t fully dissolved.

I don’t brown meat when adding it to a slow cooked stew. What it the point of possibly toughening the meat to make it that little bit browner? Good quality beef stock will take care of that for you. Unusually, this stew has no wine or stout. I add pearl barley to the stew towards the end. It does a lovely job absorbing all the lovely juices. Give this versatile grain a try, lovely in stews.

Let’s get cooking.

Ingredients

• 2 kilos of beef shin (including the weight of the bones) or 1 to 1.25 kilos of stewing beef
• flour for dusting
• olive oil
• 1 large onion, halved and sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped fine (optional)
• 4 carrots, sliced
• 200 grams (one cup) of dried pearl barley
• 2 bay leaves
• a dozen whole black peppercorns or 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary or 1 tsp of dried rosemary
• 2 litres of beef stock
• salt, to taste

Method

1. Lightly dust the beef in flour. Place in the slow cooker in a single layer. If using the oven, use a large oven proof casserole, preferably deep.
2. Heat olive oil with a small knob of butter in a skillet. Sauté the onions and the garlic until well softened and started to brown. Add to the slow cooker or casserole.
3. Add the beef stock. It should cover or come to the top of your beef pieces.
4. Make a bouquet garni with the bay leaves, peppercorns and rosemary. If using ground pepper and dried rosemary, add all directly to the stew. Just keep an eye out for the bay leaves later.
5. Put your slow cooker on medium, or your casserole into a 140C oven and go about your life.
6. After four hours or so (no need to be precise) add the carrots. Two hours later, add the pearl barley. If you’ve decided against the pearl barley, make up some mashed potatoes or pasta when you’re ready to eat.
7. The sauce may need thickening if you haven’t used pearl barley. An hour or so before serving, either thicken with cornstarch or beurre manié. Beurre manié is one of those things that you won’t trust until you’ve tried it. Good explanation here.

Lovely with a robust red wine, some crusty bread and green vegetables on the side. Thank you for reading, sharing and commenting and for cooking the recipes.