"There is a charm in making a stew, to the unaccustomed cook, from the excitement of wondering what the result will be, and whether any flavour save that of onions will survive the competition in the mixture."
- Annie Besant
With this recipe, you don't have to wonder what the result will be or whether any flavor but onion will survive. This is a tried and true recipe that we have used every year in October for our annual camp out in the Daniel Boone National Forest. Well, annual until this year that is, thanks to the government shut down. Our favorite campground - Blue Heron - was closed. So instead of cancelling a time-honored tradition celebrating my older brother's birthday (34th this year), we moved it to Jenny Wiley State Resort Park. We refused to be denied our camp out, and we had a wonderful time. The last time I remember camping during a shut down, we were locked inside the campgrounds...by ourselves...and I was in first grade...creepy and exciting at the same time. Moving on to this recipe. It is hearty, full of vegetables, and you can prepare it ahead of time and reheat it as needed. Traditionally we prepared it by lantern and fire light, at the campsite, well after the sun had set, and cooked it in a huge cast iron Dutch oven over an open fire. Ahhh...you've not had beef stew until you've had it that way. Your fingers go numb while you are peeling and slicing the vegetables, but when you are holding that steaming bowl of stew a couple of hours later, it suddenly doesn't seem so bad. This year I cooked the stew the day we were leaving and we transported it in 4 half-gallon canning jars. Each was filled to the 6 cup line, so we ended up with 24 cups of stew, which would have just filled to the top 3 of the jars. I didn't want to chance them turning over and spilling on the 2 hour drive, so I under-filled them...helped them cool faster as well. So, here we go. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
Beef Stew
3 lbs boneless beef for stew (aka stew meat)
1 cup Kentucky Kernel Seasoned Flour
2-3 Tb canola oil
9 long carrots
15- 3" long potatoes (I used ~9 russet and 5 Idaho gold)
3- 3" diameter yellow onions (I used one humongous and one average-size)
8 cups water
Kitchen Bouquet (browning liquid, optional)
15oz can peas (optional)
1. Heat oil over medium-high heat (~6) in large Dutch oven (I used 7.5 qt enamel coated Lodge Cast Iron Dutch Oven and ran out of room for the potatoes!)
2. Measure flour into gallon-size zipper bag. Add meat. Shake, wiggle, jiggle, and dance around the room until the meat is evenly coated. There should be no excess flour in the bag!
3. Begin slicing onions. I peeled them, cut off the root and green ends, halved them top-to-bottom, and then sliced thin slices top-to-bottom. Slice them into a bowl for now.
4. Once oil is hot, add meat. Leave it alone for a minute before you stir it. I used a wooden paddle type spoon to stir the meat around. The objective is to brown the flour on the meat before adding any other ingredients. It gives it a lovely color and thickens the stew.
5. Once meat has started to brown (it will not be cooked at this point), maybe 5-7 minutes into the process, add the sliced onions and stir them around. Cook for another couple of minutes.
6. Slowly pour in water and stir so most of the meat and onions are partially submerged.
7. While that comes to a simmer, get to work on the carrots. Peel them, cut them into 1" long chunks, then halve the medium thickness ones (top-to-bottom again), quarter the thick ones, and leave the skinny ones alone. Kind of like chopping wood... Add the carrots to the beef and onions.
8. Put a lid on it! I offset my lid so steam could escape. I didn't want it to boil over or splatter like the grape juice I recently processed, which is where that dark stain on my stove came from.
9. Once the meat, onions, and carrots have cooked for about half an hour, start on the potatoes. I added about an inch-and-a-half of water to the bottom of my T-Fal Dutch oven, peeled my potatoes, and dropped them in whole. Once they were all peeled, I halved them top-to-bottom, placed one half in the water while I halved the other top-to-bottom and then quartered each piece. The smaller potatoes got quartered. You can see that the water in the pot, with the potatoes, only came to just below the second knuckle of my index finger.
10. At this point, I stirred the stew and put the potatoes on medium heat to cook. Remember, I ran out of room in my Lodge Dutch oven, so I had to do the potatoes separately. Obviously, if you are paring down the recipe and doing a smaller batch, or if you had a larger pot, you would not need to do that. If you are making a half batch or even a 2/3 batch, you would simply add the potatoes to the stew and cook it all in one pot. I was trying to feed 14 people, so I needed a whopper of a batch of stew.
11. Boil the potatoes until they are fork tender. This took mine about 20 minutes.
12. Check your meat and carrots to see if they are fork tender. If they are, then you are done.
13. Again, if you are making a smaller batch you would be able to serve straight from the pan you cooked in because your potatoes would have cooked with the stew meat and other vegetables. If, however, you are feeding a small army (or sports team), you would need to figure out some way of evenly mixing the potatoes and stew in another container. I chose half-gallon canning jars as my storage method. I filled each jar to the 4 cup mark with the stew meat, carrots, onions, and cooking liquid. Then I added potatoes to each jar, which brought them up to the 6 cup mark. The canning jars made it easier to put in the cooler since vertical storage takes up less room and isn't quite as awkward to fit as a bowl. Please note that I did not "can" the stew. I simply used the jars to transport it from my house to the campground. I do not know whether this can be canned safely. I also did not add any additional salt or seasonings beyond the seasoned flour. However, you may want to adjust the seasoning. I prefer to under-salt/season something when I'm not sure how everyone likes their food. If you like peas, you can add a can of them about 10 minutes after the potatoes if you are cooking it all together. We added them when we were reheating it at the campground. You don't want them to be mush, but they need to be heated all the way through.
