My grandmother made beef stew every Sunday from the first snow until Easter. Her kitchen always smelled like onions and bay leaves, and she served it in mismatched bowls with a loaf of bread you were supposed to tear, not cut. I don't have her recipe written down anywhere. What I have is the memory of standing on a chair watching her, and about ten years of trying to get mine to taste the same.
It snowed here last night, the first real one this December, and so this morning the Dutch oven came out. This is our stew. It's not fancy, but it tastes like someone cared, and the whole pot costs about $17 and feeds eight.
Ingredients and what they cost us
- 2 lb beef chuck roast, cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks – $12.00 (on sale at $5.99/lb)
- 2 tbsp flour – $0.05
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil – $0.10
- 1 large onion, chopped – $0.50
- 3 cloves garlic, minced – $0.20
- 2 tbsp tomato paste – $0.30
- 4 cups beef broth (from bouillon) – $0.40
- 1 tsp dried thyme and 2 bay leaves – $0.20
- 2 lb russet potatoes, cut in chunks – $1.30
- 1 lb carrots, sliced thick – $0.90
- 2 ribs celery, sliced – $0.40
- 1 cup frozen peas – $0.40
- Salt and pepper – a few cents
Total: about $16.75, or roughly $2.10 per serving.
How I make it
- Pat the beef dry with paper towels, season it well with salt and pepper, and toss it with the flour.
- Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown the beef in two batches, without crowding, about 4 minutes per batch. Move it to a plate.
- Turn the heat to medium. Add the onion and cook 5 minutes, scraping up the brown bits. Add the garlic and tomato paste and stir for one minute.
- Pour in the broth, add the thyme and bay leaves, and return the beef and its juices to the pot.
- Bring to a simmer, cover, and put it in a 325°F oven for 1 1/2 hours.
- Stir in the potatoes, carrots, and celery. Cover and bake another hour, until the beef falls apart and the potatoes are tender.
- Stir in the frozen peas, let it sit 5 minutes, pull out the bay leaves, and taste for salt.
Notes
- Don't skip the browning. I skip browning in plenty of recipes, but this is the one where it counts. That crust is where the "Sunday dinner" flavor comes from.
- Chuck, not stew meat: Pre-cut stew meat is often more expensive per pound and a mix of odd cuts that cook unevenly. A whole chuck roast on sale is usually the better deal. It takes me five minutes to cube it.
- No oven? It works on the stovetop at a bare simmer. Stir now and then so the bottom doesn't catch.
- Slow cooker version: Brown the meat first, then cook everything but the peas on low for 8 hours. It's good, just a little less rich.
- Thicker gravy: Mash a few potato chunks against the side of the pot and stir.
Making $17 go further
The expensive part is the beef, so I don't add more of it. I add more vegetables. A second pound of potatoes or a parsnip or two from the bottom of the crisper stretches the pot to ten servings without anyone noticing there's less meat per bowl.
We eat it with a loaf of homemade bread or a tube of cheap biscuits if I'm short on time. Rosie eats the carrots and potatoes and leaves the beef in a small pile at the edge of her bowl, and Mike finishes it for her. He says that's the best part of being the dad.
Leftovers go in the fridge for lunches, and they taste even better on day two. Any stew that's still left by the third day, I freeze in two-cup containers. In the middle of January, when nobody has any energy left, pulling out homemade stew feels like finding money in a coat pocket.
A holiday week meal that isn't a holiday meal
The week before Christmas, our grocery budget gets squeezed by baking supplies, cookie exchanges, and the ham for Christmas dinner. That's exactly when I want a dinner that's cheap, easy, and warm. This stew does all three and makes the house smell like Grandma's kitchen while I wrap presents in the next room.
I still haven't got it to taste exactly like hers. Mike says mine is better, but he says that about everything I cook, so I'll keep trying.
