Fred's Mushroom Beef Stew
When I ran my D&D game a couple weekends back, this is what I made.
It assumes you have a big-ass crockpot like mine.
Ingredients:
- A slab or two of chuck beef (I took two slabs from the freezer totaling around 4 pounds)
- God's Own Supply of Sliced Mushrooms (we got about 5 containers of pre-sliced baby portabellas and several additional ones of whole button mushrooms which I rinsed and tore by hand into chunks)
- A few yellow sweet onions, coarsely chopped
- Olive oil
- Minced garlic (I've got mine in a jar)
- Flour
- Salt
- 2 bay leafs
- Several large pinches of thyme
- Coarsely-ground pepper (I use a mixed blend; white or black work)
- Red Wine (we used a Ravenswood Merlot)
- Worchestershire Sauce (optional-ish)
- Sherry (optional-ish)
- A bag of egg noodles
Hardware:
- Big-ass slow cooker
- A good meat-slicing kitchen knife
- Cutting board
- Wooden spoon
- A big skillet (I avoided nonstick because you want some stuff to stick to the skillet)
- A big plate
- A big bowl
Process:
Get your mushrooms sliced and your onions chopped, but don't put them into the slow cooker yet.
Trim the large hunks of fat off the chuck. Don't worry about the small hunks, just the big strips. If there's a bone in there, great! Slice it out and toss it into the slow cooker. It'll give the resulting broth some body. Cut up the remaining meat into nice-sized hunks, a couple inches on a side. No need to be regular here, you're just breaking the meat up and giving it some more surface area.
Take a big plate and put flour on it, a healthy amount. Scatter a healthy amount of kosher salt, ground pepper, and large pinches of thyme. Mix it all around with your fingertips. Take each hunk of chuck in turn and roll it around in the flour mixture, coating it thoroughly. Put the coated meat into a large bowl for later use. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have a bowl full of flour mixture coated hunks of meat.
Get your skillet and put it on the burner, turned to about medium. Put in a few tablespoons of olive oil (I eyeball this). Put a few chunks of meat into the skillet after the oil starts to shimmer, loosely covering the surface. Use tongs every minute or so to place another side against the skillet surface, searing the meat and browning the exterior coating a bit. When you're satisfied that most major sides have been nicely seared, toss the meat into the slow cooker, and repeat the process with the next few hunks. You're doing this to add flavor to the meat. Add more oil if it looks like things are drying out too much and burning too fast, but you do want little bits of meat and flour to stick to the skillet and continue to brown during this cooking process.
Once all of the meat has been browned and thrown in the slow cooker, throw in the chopped onions (I used about 3 sizable yellow onions) and several spoonfuls of minced garlic. Then fill it to the absolute top with all of your sliced mushrooms (I had to rest the lid on top). If all of your mushrooms don't fit, set aside what doesn't, and come back in an hour or two after it cooks down a bit, and put in the rest -- the cooking process should free up a lot of space over time. Make sure to get a couple bay leaves in on top of the meat if you can, or at least lower than the top layer of mushrooms.
Meanwhile, turn the heat up to medium high with your skillet and pour in about a half a cup to a cup of red wine. Using a wooden spoon, scrape around as the wine bubbles and boils, "deglazing" the pan. Once you feel like you've scraped up most of the yummy browned bits, pour that into the slow-cooker, over the meat, onions, and mushrooms. Pour in about a quarter cup of sherry and/or worchestershire sauce as well, to add a few more dimensions to the eventual sauce. You can pour in a bit more of the merlot if you want, but I prefer to start my slow-cooker dishes fairly dry, since the mushrooms, meat, and onions will shed a lot of liquid. Throw in a few more pinches of thyme, ground pepper, or salt if it suits you.
Turn your slow cooker on to "low" and walk away for 6-8 hours (I did 8). Stir occasionally if you must, but keep that lid on it!
In the last half hour of cooking, you'll have a fair amount of liquid in there. It'll have some thickness to it, but I like to pour in a bag of egg noodles at this point, stir them in so they're covered by the liquid, and walk away for the remaining half hour. When I come back the noodles will be soft and completely hydrated by flavorful liquid instead of just water.
Serve over dharshai's mashed potatoes.
It assumes you have a big-ass crockpot like mine.
Ingredients:
- A slab or two of chuck beef (I took two slabs from the freezer totaling around 4 pounds)
- God's Own Supply of Sliced Mushrooms (we got about 5 containers of pre-sliced baby portabellas and several additional ones of whole button mushrooms which I rinsed and tore by hand into chunks)
- A few yellow sweet onions, coarsely chopped
- Olive oil
- Minced garlic (I've got mine in a jar)
- Flour
- Salt
- 2 bay leafs
- Several large pinches of thyme
- Coarsely-ground pepper (I use a mixed blend; white or black work)
- Red Wine (we used a Ravenswood Merlot)
- Worchestershire Sauce (optional-ish)
- Sherry (optional-ish)
- A bag of egg noodles
Hardware:
- Big-ass slow cooker
- A good meat-slicing kitchen knife
- Cutting board
- Wooden spoon
- A big skillet (I avoided nonstick because you want some stuff to stick to the skillet)
- A big plate
- A big bowl
Process:
Get your mushrooms sliced and your onions chopped, but don't put them into the slow cooker yet.
Trim the large hunks of fat off the chuck. Don't worry about the small hunks, just the big strips. If there's a bone in there, great! Slice it out and toss it into the slow cooker. It'll give the resulting broth some body. Cut up the remaining meat into nice-sized hunks, a couple inches on a side. No need to be regular here, you're just breaking the meat up and giving it some more surface area.
Take a big plate and put flour on it, a healthy amount. Scatter a healthy amount of kosher salt, ground pepper, and large pinches of thyme. Mix it all around with your fingertips. Take each hunk of chuck in turn and roll it around in the flour mixture, coating it thoroughly. Put the coated meat into a large bowl for later use. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have a bowl full of flour mixture coated hunks of meat.
Get your skillet and put it on the burner, turned to about medium. Put in a few tablespoons of olive oil (I eyeball this). Put a few chunks of meat into the skillet after the oil starts to shimmer, loosely covering the surface. Use tongs every minute or so to place another side against the skillet surface, searing the meat and browning the exterior coating a bit. When you're satisfied that most major sides have been nicely seared, toss the meat into the slow cooker, and repeat the process with the next few hunks. You're doing this to add flavor to the meat. Add more oil if it looks like things are drying out too much and burning too fast, but you do want little bits of meat and flour to stick to the skillet and continue to brown during this cooking process.
Once all of the meat has been browned and thrown in the slow cooker, throw in the chopped onions (I used about 3 sizable yellow onions) and several spoonfuls of minced garlic. Then fill it to the absolute top with all of your sliced mushrooms (I had to rest the lid on top). If all of your mushrooms don't fit, set aside what doesn't, and come back in an hour or two after it cooks down a bit, and put in the rest -- the cooking process should free up a lot of space over time. Make sure to get a couple bay leaves in on top of the meat if you can, or at least lower than the top layer of mushrooms.
Meanwhile, turn the heat up to medium high with your skillet and pour in about a half a cup to a cup of red wine. Using a wooden spoon, scrape around as the wine bubbles and boils, "deglazing" the pan. Once you feel like you've scraped up most of the yummy browned bits, pour that into the slow-cooker, over the meat, onions, and mushrooms. Pour in about a quarter cup of sherry and/or worchestershire sauce as well, to add a few more dimensions to the eventual sauce. You can pour in a bit more of the merlot if you want, but I prefer to start my slow-cooker dishes fairly dry, since the mushrooms, meat, and onions will shed a lot of liquid. Throw in a few more pinches of thyme, ground pepper, or salt if it suits you.
Turn your slow cooker on to "low" and walk away for 6-8 hours (I did 8). Stir occasionally if you must, but keep that lid on it!
In the last half hour of cooking, you'll have a fair amount of liquid in there. It'll have some thickness to it, but I like to pour in a bag of egg noodles at this point, stir them in so they're covered by the liquid, and walk away for the remaining half hour. When I come back the noodles will be soft and completely hydrated by flavorful liquid instead of just water.
Serve over dharshai's mashed potatoes.