Healthy beef stew

A good old beef stew can warm you up in the coldest of winters. The beef stew is easy to make even for the beginners to the kitchen as you can add and minus just about any ingredients you like. The preparation of the vegetables is a little work but the actual cooking part of it is practically naught, only adding all the ingredients to the pot.

Old-Fashioned Beef Stew Ingredients

To make a typical old fashioned beef stew you will need a pound of lean beef that is cut into chunks, two table spoons of olive oil two table spoons of flour, two red onions and two yellow onions both of which are sliced, two cups of mushrooms sliced up, four cloves of minced garlic, one tea spoon of white pepper, one tea spoon of dried out thyme, one tea spoon of fried out basil, two cups of broth of beef, two table spoons of tomato puree, a bay leaf, two potatoes of medium size in slices, four cups full of sliced carrot, one cup of green beans, one table spoon of cornstarch and one table spoon of water.

Directions for Cooking

Once all your ingredients are ready you can put flour on the beef just to lightly coat it before you heat oil in the pan and sauté it until it reaches a brown color after which you can place it on a plate to one side. Now you can put the onions and the mushrooms in the pot to sauté a little and add in the garlic and the other spices to allow to sauté for one minute whilst stirring. After a minute, pour off the fat build up and put the beef back in the pot with the sautéed ingredients, now you can add the tomato paste, bay leaf and the beef broth and pour in some water just to cover the ingredients a little. Boil the liquid for a second and then simmer for about an hour or so. Now you can skim off the foam that has built up over the hour and add to the pot the carrots, beans and the potatoes so now you can simmer all together for another twenty minutes. Whilst you are waiting you can add together the cornstarch and the water then add to the stew after the twenty minutes and boil the mixture uncovered for a minute. Now all you need to do is take away the bay leaf, garish if you like and serve.

Experimentation

With a beef stew as mentioned earlier you can experiment with the ingredients. You can also hide the vegetable content from your children by mashing them prior to serving.