Also, will someone please buy me a digital camera? the phone camera sucks.
Once again, as with the spaghetti sauce, this is my dad's recipe. but all mistakes are mine :)
For starters you need 1.5 pounds of beef. I like to just buy the precut stewing beef, because then you don't have to trim it. I still cut it into smaller pieces though. If you can't get it precut or it's much cheaper not too, get a nice piece of beef and trim off the fat on the outside and cut it into cubes about 3/4 inch.
I bought stewing meat, so I just made the pieces smaller and then dumped them into my big pot and turned the gas on about medium. I stirred every so often until the meat was pretty brown on all sides. This creates some nice juicyness and drippings that will make the stew taste good. add some salt and pepper at this point as well. while it's cooking chop one small-medium sized onion or half a large onion. when the meat is pretty brown, add in the onion. and then it will look like this:
Next it's time for spices. lots of spices. add dried thyme, basil, and marjoram (marjoram is key - it's totally what makes it taste/smell like stew!) I usually add about 1-2 tablespoons of each - but mostly I just play it by ear. whatever I have enough of. Stir.
Then comes the tricky part - not that tricky, but my dad made it sound tricky when he was first explaining it to me. add 2 tablespoons of flour, like this:
stir the flour until the meat and onions are nicely coated. this is what will thicken the broth into a tasty, thick stew.
next add water. I like to add a lot. the general rule is 2 cups of water for every bullion cube that you are going to add, and you need to bring the water level up at least as twice as high as the meat, but I like to bring it up much higher. This time I added 6 cups of water, but then I added more later, so it might be prudent to add it all at the beginning. now turn the heat up to high. then I added 3 beef bullion cubes - however, these were extra large bullion cubes, and I think made the stew a bit saltier than I liked it, so if you used extra large bullion cubes, I'd go with 8 cups of water for 3 bullion cubes.
Next use a wooden spoon to scrape the sides and bottom of the pot so all those nice drippings the meat made earlier get mixed into the broth.
Add a bay leaf.
now lower the heat so that the soup is simmering, not boiling. just little bubbles. Let it sit on the stove simmering for about an hour. if you only have half an hour, that's ok, but longer is better.
While it's doing that chop your vegetables. My dad always says 3/4 cup of carrots and 3/4 of a cup of potatoes, but I always add more than that because that's my favorite part. I think I chopped 1 1/2 cups of carrots and 2 cups of potatoes (peeled first) and it was about right.
The carrot was actually all one carrot, because it was an enormous carrot from my farmshare. the potatoes were also from the farm share, but unlike the carrot, were not so spectacularly large as to require me to take a picture of them:
Look how big that is!!!
After an hour, add the carrots, and stir.
let the carrots simmer for ten minutes in the stew, and then add the potatoes.
finally, add the secret ingredient:
2 tablespoons of plain tomato paste, and stir. You will see that this completely changes the color of the stew, and makes it amaaaaazing.
cook until the potatoes are nice and tender - but take it off the heat before they get mushy!
You can check the salt and pepper at this time and adjust to taste as needed. I say less salt, but sometimes really peppery stew is excellent.
you can serve it right off the stove once the potatoes are done, but it is best 1-2 days later out of the fridge. if the broth has dissipated, feel good about adding a fair bit of water to it before it hits the stove/microwave for reheating. The leftovers are always better than the original.
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