Try New Meals

Subscribe to my RSS Feed To Keep Up To Date.
Thanks For Visiting Try New Meals.

A friend of mine just bought me a Company’s Coming cookbook for my birthday, which was at the beginning of this month. It is a stews, chilies and chowders cookbook, perfect for the chilly winter weather. I found a recipe in there for a stew that you bake in the oven first. I had never heard of doing it that way before and it sounded good so I gave it a try. First of all I have to say the taste of this stew was delicious! I absolutely will be making this again, however with that being said I will be changing a few things because this did not turn out as it should have.

INGREDIENTS

• 4 Medium potatoes, quartered
• 4 Medium carrots, cut lengthwise and crosswise into chunks
• 3 Medium yellow turnips, cut lengthwise and crosswise into chunks
• 3 Medium onions, cut into wedges
• 3 Medium celery ribs, with leaves, cut into chunks
• 2 lbs Boneless inside round (or blade or chuck) steak, trimmed of fat and cubed
• 1 Tbsp cooking oil
• ½ tsp fresh ground pepper
• 1/3 cup pearl barley
• 4 cups water
• 14oz. Can of stewed tomatoes, with juice
• 2 Tbsp beef bouillon powder
• 1 Bay leaf
• ¼ tsp dried thyme, crushed
• ½ cup water
• 3 Tbsp flour

DIRECTIONS

• Combine first five ingredients in large roaster.
• Sear beef in cooking oil in large frying pan until browned on all sides. Add to vegetable mixture.
• Add pepper and barley, stir.
• Combine first amount of water, tomatoes with juice, bouillon powder, bay leaf and thyme in large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Pour over beef mixture. Cover. Bake in a 325 F (160 C ) oven for two to three hours until beef is tender. Remove and discard bay leaf. Use slotted spoon to remove vegetables and beef to serving bowl. Keep warm. Pour remaining liquid into medium saucepan. There should be about 1 ½ cups. Stir second amount of water into flour in small bowl until smooth. Gradually stir into liquid in saucepan. Heat and stir on medium until boiling and thickened. Pour over beef and vegetables.

Recipe Alterations

As usual I have made some changes to the recipe and this is what I have changed:

1. Only used one turnip instead of three
2. Only used one onion instead of three
3. Added more pepper than called for
4. Used pot barley instead of pearl barley as that was what I had on hand
5. Instead of stewed tomatoes in juice, used diced tomatoes in juice. I like them better.
6. Had to make my own gravy as there was no liquid left by the time this came out of the oven. Used some beef broth I had in the cupboard.

Family Taste Test

I really enjoyed this stew, thought it tasted great. My husband and son liked it but were not overly impressed by it. They found it just ok, nothing memorable. With there being as many vegetables as there is in this recipe I am surprised that my son ate as much as he did anyway. Speaking of vegetables, when I went to the grocery store to get the turnips, which I have never cooked before, I could not find them. I know what they look like but when I went over to the area where I thought they were it said rutabaga. I asked the guy working in the produce area and he said that he thought they were turnips as well but had just started working there so he would go ask someone else. When he came back he said they were turnips and the sign must just be wrong. As soon as I started peeling the turnip though I remembered the smell. I had forgotten that I used to eat rutabaga’s when I was younger and that is exactly what they smelled like. Now I was confused, were they turnips or rutabaga’s? Even trying to find the answer online I am still not too sure, some sites say they are the same thing, some say they aren’t. The point of that long winded story was to say that if you are like me and have never cooked a turnip before, and all you can find is a rutabaga they are apparently interchangeable, if not the same thing.

My Thoughts

As I said I would make this stew again, although a few things would be done differently. The first being that I would keep the amount of meat the same but cut the amount of vegetables in half. This made way too much. Along those lines were two other problems I had. I did not have a roaster big enough for all the food so I had to divide everything among two roasters, but cutting the vegetables down should solve that problem. Also when I took this out of the oven there was absolutely no liquid left in the pans, that being why I had to make my own gravy. With less vegetables this might help but I do not think it would hurt to add some more liquid at the beginning of the cooking time anyway. This recipe would work as just vegetables and a roast as well, not making a stew at all. Just add enough liquid to cook everything, I think it would be very good that way.

Filed under: Soup