So I’m not a world-class chef, but I’m a 40 year old husband and father who has to do my fair share of cooking.  I’m fortunate to be able to work from home a decent amount with the line of work I’m in, so recently I started using a slow cooker.  It’s nice for being able to do some prep, fire ingredients, and come back 4-8 hours later, depending on if it’s set on low or high.

In order to prep for this, I bought a bunch of slow cooker books and read the entire internet.  Well, not really, but I did try a few of these out over the years and the one I make now I’m in love with.  It takes about 30-45 minutes to prep, then roughly 4 hours and 15 minutes for cooking, give or take.

Here is the original source for the recipe, only I did two things differently:

  1. I add 1 TBSP of brown sugar rather than the 1/2 TBSP it called for.  I liked it sweeter.
  2. I make up a pound of extra wide egg noodles, and will place a small bed of egg noodles under my stew.  Salt and pepper the egg noodles a bit prior to adding stew on top.  Below is what the end results looked like
Beef Stew

 

When you go to make this up, make sure you brown the meat well first prior to adding.  This is because we want the Maillard Reaction to take effect….also, of interest, I got a stainless steel sauce pan just for this and sauce.  Why?  Because on the non-stick surfaces, you just don’t get browning to work as well…and the flavors you get from this take this from a 9 to a 10.  After I remove the meat, I’m adding the beef stock which then helps me get all of the brown goodness up.

Enjoy!

 

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