Hearty Beef Stew

I grew up in rural Minnesota and no matter how far I travel or how different my life becomes, Minnesota will always hold a rather sizable chunk of my heart. I have no doubt that with little effort I could overwhelm you with memories, theories, and plenty of poetic sense and nonsense about my home state. However, I believe I have the restraint to keep my musings brief... at least for the moment. You may be wondering what any of this has to do with beef stew. While this is a reasonable question, the answer seems rather obvious to me. Being a Minnesotan, I cannot in good conscious ever discuss beef stew without first offering a brief nod to the land of 10,000 lakes. In Minnesota we know and love our stews, hotdishes, casseroles, pot pies, pasties... basically, we specialize in any hearty meal that involves a bunch of meat, potatoes, vegetables, and other miscellaneous items jumbled together in a large vessel. I can imagine nothing more welcome on a frosty afternoon than a steaming bowl of beef stew, and nothing more wholesome than a spread of 20 hotdishes and a sea of friendly faces at a potluck. It would seem like a terrible betrayal to write about this one beef stew and its rather charming chef without also acknowledging the lifetime of amazing food shared with me by the community that first shaped my life. Thank you all.

So. Ken made this stew as part of the meal planning/organizational extravaganza that I mentioned in the previous post. In the end, the stew was really quite remarkable. I probably shouldn't give away the big secret that made this stew so fantastic- but, eh, what the heck. The secret ingredient was the leftover reduced beef gravy from the roast dinner. It was extremely rich and flavorful and was just the right addition to transform this stew from a good meal into a succulent mouth watering experience.

The recipe follows. As autumn sets in and cold weather starts to arrive, I highly recommend making a nice stew. Really, there's nothing quite like it.

1 lb cubed raw beef
3 carrots coarsely chopped
1 onion, chopped
4 potatoes in chunks
green beans, cleaned and cut into sections
2 tomatoes, coarsely chopped
4 C beef stock
1 T tomato paste
1 bay leaf
dried thyme, salt & pepper to taste

Cook the carrots and onions in a heavy saucepan over med-low heat until they are just starting to caramelize. Next add the tomato paste and fry it for about 1 min. Then add the stock. In a regular frying pan, brown the beef chunks. Once the meat is browned, dump it and everything else into the saucepan and cook for 4 hours.

We ate the stew with toasted and buttered sourdough bread. Yum.