No matter how you prepare it, a good stew is always considered comfort food for cold days. It’s also a meal that is packed with hearty ingredients that are just as satisfying any type of weather where you want to feel pampered on a gloomy day.
It used to be in the old days, you would cook stew inside a Dutch oven and place hot coals onto the lid. Modern versions don’t require you to do this anymore and they’re designed to go into your oven. Since we’re using boneless chuck, you want to get tender beef that isn’t a struggle to chew. You’ll find that this recipe gives you a little bit of everything that appeals to kids as well as adults. Here what you’ll need to start:
- 3 pounds of boneless beef chuck
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Kosher salt and ground black pepper
- 1 yellow onion (chopped)
- 3 carrots (cut into slices)
- 2 garlic cloves (chopped)
- 2 tablespoons butter (unsalted)
- 6 tablespoons flour (all-purpose)
- 6 cups beef stock or broth
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon rosemary (dried)
- 1 teaspoon sage (dried)
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 cup cooked white beans (Cannellini beans)
- 1 cup barley
Prepping your beef
To kick things off you want to fire up your oven, preheating this to 325F degrees. The kitchen rack should be set to the lower section of your oven.
Now you grab your cutting board and lay your slab of beef onto it. Take a paper towel and dab off any moisture that might be on the meat.
Take a nice sharp knife to slice your meat into 1-inch cubes. On your stovetop, place your Dutch oven and set the heat to medium-high.
Add olive oil into the Dutch oven and add salt and pepper to your cubed beef. Once your Dutch oven is hot enough, add just enough cubes to sear each side so you don’t have overcrowding in the pot.
Brown each side so to form a nice crust (about 4 minutes per batch). Now you transfer these seared cubes to a plate and allow them to sit on a plate until you’re ready to add them back to the pot.
Into the same pot, now you can add your carrots, onion, garlic and wait until the onions start to turn glassy. This is when you add the butter and let this melt all over the veggies. You can also add your flour into this mix stirring it so it gets completely soaked in.
Take your stock and pout this into the pot followed by the tomato paste, rosemary, sage, and bay leaf. You’ll follow this up by adding the barley and your white beans.
Now you turn up the heat and bring this entire mixture to a boil. Be sure to stir the contents before adding the lid. Once you reach a good boil, you should add the cubed beef and then afterward turn off your stovetop heat and allow it to settle down.
This is when you can now place the Dutch oven into your oven to cook for 2 hours. At this time you don’t need to check the stew, it will cook the beans, meat, and veggies to perfection.
Serving your stew
Grab a big bowl and add your stew into the bowl using a soup ladle. Let it cool down if you want to put it into the fridge for eating later. Your hot stew is best enjoyed with baked biscuits or freshly baked bread. The combination of hearty meat is tender and savory. Don’t forget to remove the bay leaf since this cannot be eaten. Enjoy!
