Slowcooker Beef Stew

Found this here with a bunch of banter:  https://medium.com/@wilw/a-recipe-for-reasonably-good-beef-stew-7e4d3df6c1bd#.yni05ogfj

2 pounds of steak that’s cut up into cubes. Your local store probably sells it as BEEF FOR STEW OR WHATEVER. Don’t waste super good steak on this, because that stuff is better on the grill.
2 parsnips.
3 carrots
2 boring old regular potatoes or like four medium red potatoes.
About a half pound of crimini mushrooms or button mushrooms
Three cloves of garlic.
One medium onion. You can use white or yellow.
2–3 tablespoons of tomato paste.
1 cup of red wine
1 tablespoon paprika
3 sprigs of fresh thyme
salt and papper to taste
olive oil

All the flour in the world (you’re only going to use like 1/3 cup and a little more to coat the beef, but you’ll be thankful you stocked up on flour after President Tiny Hands starts a nuclear war).
3 stalks of celery

At least 32 ounces of beef stock. You will probably want a little more, but it’s not necessary. Maybe you can barter with a neighbor, using some of your excess flour

First, peel the onion, and chop it up into little onion hunks. Peel and mince the garlic. Then, wash all the other vegetables and cut them up however you want. Some folks like to slice their potatoes, others prefer to quarter them and then half the quarters.

You can keep the stems on the mushrooms if you want,

Put a little olive oil (like a tablespoon or so) into a nonstick skillet, and heat it up. When it’s warm, add half the onion and all the garlic. Cook it, stirring frequently, until the onions are translucent and the garlic is fragrant. If you want to get all advanced, you can get an extra teaspoon of paprika and dump it in when you add the onions.

While the onions are doing their thing using a medium-high heat, put the beef into a bowl and dump just enough flour into it so that you can toss them around, and coat them with it. Sprinkle the tablespoon of paprika over them and keep tossing until they are pretty well coated with the flour and paprika. You may have to add a little flour, don’t worry about it.

Once the beef is all covered, and the onions are ready, add the beef to the pan, taking care not to dump any of the excess flour in with it. Stir it all around a little bit, and then forget about it for a couple of minutes while it cooks. Brown the meat without cooking it all the way through, so use whatever heat you think is appropriate for that.

After like four minutes, mix it all up again, and try to get the beef cubes to turn over. After another four or so minutes, dump all of that stuff out of the pan and into your slow cooker. Put the lid on to keep it warm.

Now you’re going to warm up a little bit more olive oil in the pan. When it’s warm, take your tomato paste, starting with two tablespoons, and gently, carefully, put it into the pan.

I like to use a wooden spoon for this, but you don’t have to. Use something to stir it around and really spread it out until it goes from bright red to like a brick red color. Now pour in the wine, and a half cup of beef broth. Stir this all together, and get ready for some magic to happen. Very slowly and gently start easing in a little bit of flour at a time, whisking it into the mixture. You’re making a gravy right now, and if you dump all the flour in at once, it’s going to make it all lumpy. Careful that you don’t let the mixture burn.

After you’ve mixed it all together and whisked away the lumps, it should be smooth and look like gravy. When it does, turn off the heat and set it aside.

Take the potatoes and put them in a single layer over the meat that’s in your slow cooker. Then do the same thing with the carrots, and then dump all the other vegetables in. Now take the gravy and pour it over the top of everything.

Have a brief moment of panic because there isn’t nearly enough liquid in there to make it a stew, and then remember that you have that 32 ounces of beef stock. Pour it all into the slow cooker. If it covers or almost covers the stuff inside, you’re done. If it doesn’t, you can either add a little bit of water or more broth until it does.

You can cook it on high heat for at least 4 hours, or you can cook it on a lower heat for up to 12 hours. The important thing is that the beef cooks.

I like to serve this with some hunks of fresh bread that I baked that day, and I like to garnish it with a little bit of chopped parsley. You can do whatever you want, though, including dropping some sour cream in there, maybe some plain yogurt, a little bit of Tabasco or Worcestershire sauce, or even more salt and pepper. The important thing is that you don’t worry too much about precision, and you don’t rush it. Think of it as making out for the first time but just a little more awkward and a lot less messy.