It’s fall, and that means ’tis getting to be the season for stews. Although many beef stews take several hours to cook, this one is done in about an hour or so. The secret to faster cooking is to cut the meat small; the recipe calls for cutting it into 1/2 inch cubes. It will cook partly when you brown the meat, and will cook through and get tender as it simmers in the sauce.
I bought a package of pre-cut beef stew meat (chuck) for this, but I cut it smaller. If you don’t want to bother cutting it smaller, be prepared to have to cook it longer, at least an additional hour.
I cooked this in my Lodge 5-quart cast iron Dutch oven. I strayed a bit from the instructions in the original recipe by browning the meat in batches, for six minutes each. If you crowd the pan, your meat will steam and not brown. Y want that nice brown crust, that is where all of the flavor is! And I chose to use cast iron, because it gives you a better sear than anything else.
So I did it in three batches, and then browned the onions for five minutes in the fat in the pan. Then I threw all of the browned meat back in, mixed it with the onions, and then added the flour, and proceeded with the recipe as instructed.
The only other change I made was to throw in a 10 ounce box of frozen peas, thawed, at the very end. This is solely because Mike likes peas in his beef stew. You have to put them in at the very end, and simmer until the peas are just heated. Otherwise, they will turn a nasty shade of olive green and get all mushy. Yeeecccchhh!
If you use cast iron, please do not leave it to soak in the sink for too long (such as overnight); this will cause it to rust. Also, never use soap in it! I have a dedicated cast iron scrubbing brush that has never touched soap, which I keep hidden from Mike. I just rise the pan out, scrub it with the brush, rinse again, and then dry thoroughly with paper towels before putting it away. Failure to do this will cause the pan to rust. A properly seasoned cast iron pan is non-stick, so this should be all you need to do to clean it.
People ask me all the time – isn’t it unsanitary to not use soap/detergent? The answer is NO. When you use the pan, it gets hotter than all hell, and will kill anything that might be lurking on it. As the great chef Jacques Pépin once said, if it lives after being heated up to that temperature, it deserves to live. Something like that.
And…very important…if the pan is still hot, DO NOT run cold water into it! This will make the pan crack, much like what might happen with a porcelain tile in a similar situation. Run hot water into it, or let it cool down a bit before washing it.
Oh…now I guess I need to give you the recipe! I got it from the September 2009 issue of Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food. This is no longer on the newsstands, being that it’s now October, but fortunately for you, it’s online. Right here – Beef Stew with Noodles.
The recipe says that it serves four people…let me add that it serves four, very generously! Enjoy!
