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Thursday, April 14, 2011

My Beef Stew this time!

A while back, i ordered chuck steak from butcher2u.com.au

that was meant for making my beef stew.

It was a free day and i went out to buy veggies and more meat because i decided that the amount of chuck steak might not be enough + hui had melissa over for dinner.

Out i went. (remember to bring my trolley next time)

I bought ox-tail. some carrots, onions etc.

Here goes, my version (still subjected to changes though)

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It is actually, really difficult to take a good picture of beef stew.

Ingredients

1330gm beef – 680g chuck steak 650g oxtail
175g bacon – leave it whole
2 medium sized onions
2 carrots (hui requested for more)
6 large white button mushrooms
3 potatoes (fish didn’t like them)
4 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 dried bay leaf
Dark Soy Sauce
for starters: (more will be added later, as per your discretion)
500ml red wine
500ml water

Directions

While chopping the ingredients, boil a pot of water.

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When it comes to a boil, add in the diced chuck steak and oxtail (or whatever meat you’re using) and cook for 10-15 mins to get rid of any gamey-ness and excess fats.

Drain and leave aside.

In a cast iron pan, or a Le Creuset in my case (Fish bought one when i wasn’t around last year!) fry the bacon. I said to leave them whole because after the cooking process, it can be discarded, there was absolutely no flavour to them after all the stewing.

After the bacon, add in the onions, garlic and mushrooms.

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Let them slowly cook and reduce in size.

Layer the beef on top of the mixture and add in half of the wine and water.

Add the chopped carrots on top then add the rest of the liquid. (Potatoes were not such a good idea. they almost disintegrated by the time the stewing was done)

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Cover and simmer for 30 mins, then give it a stir to combine the veggies and stew till it’s time to eat. A good 2-3 hours would be great.

Within the 2-3 hours, we added more red wine and more water when it was needed, whenever it looked like it was drying out. so just add according to how your stew looks and tastes like.

When it’s done. it will be quite sweet because of all the red wine and carrots. so add a tablespoon or two of dark soy sauce to give it color and saltiness.

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It really is very difficult to take a good picture.

We bought a bag of instant mash potatoes from our trip to Ikea, so we cooked it all and fish added a good amount of spring onions in it. And thus, formed our dinner!

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yummy!

pork chops coming up soon! with a delicious but really simple sauce!

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