There’s nothing quite like a hearty bowl of beef and vegetable stew on a cold winter’s night.
Experimenting with my new slow cooker, I decided to make a beef stew – specifically the “easy” beef stew recipe from BBC Good Food.
The recipe came with so many five-star reviews that I wanted to test it out myself to see if it was really that good.
The stew took me 15 minutes to prep and eight hours to cook on a low setting.
The cooking time could be reduced by four hours if the slow cooker is set on high, however, you may not get the same texture of meat.
Ingredients
One onion, chopped
Two celery sticks
Two tablespoons rapeseed or vegetable oil
Three carrots, halved and cut into chunks
Two bay leaves
Half a pack thyme
Two tablespoons tomato puree
Two tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Two beef stock cubes or stock pots
900g beef
Two teaspoons cornflour (optional)
Method
I started by chopping up all the vegetables and measuring out the ingredients.
Next, I fried the onion and celery in one tablespoon of oil over a low heat until they started to soften – about five minutes – before adding the carrots, bay leaves and thyme and frying for two minutes.
After, I stirred in the puree, Worcestershire sauce and 600ml of boiling water, then stirred and tipped everything into my slow cooker.
At this point, I crumbled over the stock cubes and stirred, then seasoned with pepper. I decided against adding salt as the stock was already salty.
The final step was to clean the frying pan and fry the beef in the remaining oil until it was well-browned, before adding it to the slow cooker. I set the appliance to low for eight hours.
Checking in on the stew after eight hours, I noticed that the gravy was very thin, so I decided to thicken it with cornflour. I added the cornflour with a splash of cold water to make a paste and stirred in two tablespoons of the liquid from the slow cooker.
I added the paste to the stew, stirred it and left it to cook for a further 30 minutes on high.
I decided to serve the beef stew on a bed of smooth and creamy mashed potatoes and it was incredible.
As I left the stew to cook for a long time at a lower temperature, it made the beef tender and juicy.
For those running short of time, they can put everything except the cornflour and parsley in a slow cooker without frying it first and simply switch it on.
While it won’t have quite the same depth of flavour, you will still have a delicious beef stew.
For those who don’t have a slow cooker, they can cook the stew in their oven on 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Cover the casserole with a lid and cook the stew in the oven for two hours and 30 minutes or up to three hours, until the beef is very tender.
