beef stew

For the second time this winter, I've made a batch of beef stew.  I looked at several recipes online and from there I sort of put together a recipe of my own.

I noticed that several of the recipes include wine as an ingredient. I think the acidity helps to make the meat tender.  I have never really cooked with wine so I used a few generous splashes of balsamic vinegar instead.

Here is what I started with...

That's a sirloin roast, celery, onions, carrots, red potatoes.

Beefy Onion dry soup mix, bay leaf, salt, pepper, paprika, oregano.

Balsamic vinegar and ketchup (a substitute for tomato paste and sugar).

Not pictured here but I also had some beef broth from my freezer that I used as well.

I started by sauteing diced onions and celery, then transferred those to my roasting pan.

I diced the beef roast into large cubes, salted, peppered, and rolled them lightly in flour.

 I browned the cubes in oil, in small batches, deglazing the pan each time to get the all the sticky cooked-on bits to add to the stew. 

Transferred the meat to the roaster, sprinkled with beefy onion soup mix, salt, pepper, paprika, oregano, bay leaf, and balsamic vinegar. 

The sliced carrots went in too, since they take longer to cook than the potatoes. Oops, just remembered to add parsley too.

I added beef broth/ water to cover the ingredients and baked (covered pan) in a 325 degree oven for an hour. 

Then, I added the chopped red potatoes, along with ketchup and more liquid.

Then back in the oven for about 2 hours longer...until potatoes were done and beef was tender.

it just isn't very photogenic!

We had this for Sunday dinner, along with Grands canned biscuits, deviled eggs, and homemade cole slaw.

  The bread ring on the right rear there is a "5 Cheese Greek Spiral" that I had bought at Trader Joes for us to try out.  We liked it okay - except for Chopper - he suspected that it had some goat cheese in there...which he doesn't like. He says goat cheese is baa-a-ad!

The small bowl of shredded cheddar is on the table for the Sasquatch. He likes it in his cole slaw.

Later for dessert we had two things...both made from mixes that were on clearance after Christmas.

I had bought a pumpkin bar mix for 25 cents, and the Sasquatch had brought over a "Salted Caramel" cookie mix that he bought for 99 cents.

The salted caramel cookies had a good flavor...something different. There were little caramel flavored nuggets in them.

I'm going to search around on the internet and see if I can find a recipe for making that type of cookie.