How to Make Beef Stew

This pot smells delicious and it’s the base for our ultimate beef stew. Now I have probably two and a half pounds of beef shoulder that I cut up in large cubes. It was almost like one inch by one inch square. I toss some of the flour and brown them on a large pot, with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and some butter and we really caramelized the meat. All right, wine is going to add such a subtle, luxurious sauce at the end of it when it starts to cook down. All right, I’m going to take some garlic and throw them whole because this is like sort of rustic style cooking so I want to see it. Take some garlic cloves, maybe four kind of nice. All right, so smash the garlic on then and just kind of pull out the large pieces of them and then separate from the paper and I’m just going to add it to the pot. And this is going to have a nice little sweet flavor and take this chunky bits separate from the paper, I’ll just drop them in. Great, that’s smells great and I should just get that. Now were talking about beef stew, all right so were going to add some beef stock. We’re also going to throw in some fresh thyme with this as well and these organic box beef stock you can buy at any grocery store. I’m going to use only about half of this alright, throw it in about two and a half cups. All right, and I'm also going to add thyme with this, like a lot of fresh thyme like a half a bunch. All right, don’t use dried thyme, fresh thyme is the only way to go. And we’re just going to throw the sticks in just like that because as it starts to simmer very slowly the lings are going to fall off and then we’ll just dig out the sticks later. Now as far as flavoring the pot, I want to give it a couple of different notes, a couple different pops and palate. Alright, and with that we got bay leaf, a little bit of ground clove, which I know it sounds kind of interesting to my beef stew. But it’s—when it cooks down, you’re not even going to really be able to detect it, it’s just come out on really deep floral notes to the palate itself. And I’m not talking about a lot I’m talking about a pinch. All right, see you got some ground clove in there and so it’s really deep. All right, now mostly I got to add some bay leaf to this are you right. You know dried bay leaf is one of these things that if I’m making a pot or something that cooks down for a long period of time I can’t cook without this guys. All right, it adds a really beautiful base herb flavor to our sauce. All right, so were talking about base flavor, I was talking a high note, orange peel. It’s a great way to pull out a sort of bright finish flavor on things. And there’s so much flavor inside the juice where like fresh squeeze orange juice, there’s also so much flavor on the outside as well. Like to the orange peel is loaded with zest and you can take one of these guys and squeeze it and all of the zest starts to fly all over the place and that’s the essential oil from the orange, that’s what make potpourri smell good. All right, so were going take couple of fat strips to our pot and let that cook down. And we’re going to take all our buddies here, everybody is going back in the pool like that. So potatoes will be going first because they’re going to take the longest to cook, they’ll going to cook perfectly in this liquid, it’s been great. Now because there is a little bit starch in the potato as well it’s known to help thicken it. Next up we got some root vegetables and carrots, which are great. I mean a couple like bugs bunny looking carrots. All right, cut the tips of and we’re just going to take a peeler just peel them down. All right I did that carrots and just kind of line them up and we’re just going to pop them off in circles just like that. All right we take these guys we’re going to swipe them in, all right and the carrots are nice and sweet, so it will give a nice little bit of sugar to the ultimate beef stew, going in, give it a stir, it smells fantastic already. Now we’re going to add some white button mushrooms right to our stew. All right so these are large button cultivated mushrooms. All right I'm just going to take a knife and I just go pop them in four pieces. Just give it a stir one more time and the mushrooms are going to start to pouch in that rich beef liquid, this tastes awesome. All right the next thing were going to add, is one of my favorite things in the kitchen, believe it or not frozen pearl onions. All right it’s so simple and it cost you a buck 50, all right so we take a nice little handful of pearl onions, fold them as well. And get all the aroma from the red wine and the orange peel and the herbs and that rich melted delicious beef flavor the house smells awesome. All right so I’m just going to take a little half bunch of parsley, chop it up, throw it right on top. So I want to get some nice fresh color also like a really fresh flavor right on top of the whole thing. It looks beautiful it’s cook down, it’s rich exactly where I want it. It looks great, so let me take by box of frozen peas, like I said before right at the last minute, they’re thawed out, just going to throw it in and let them warm up. Actually you want to keep it nice and green and a splash of a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, touch of salt, little fresh crack pepper and then going with the big ladle because I mean business. Take some our stew, on that beautiful tender beef shoulder, we braised down for two and a half hours. All right we’re just going to pile it up in a bowl just like that and I would really eat this than go to a four star restaurant any night of the week.