Months ago, I got it into my head that I should make stew in the slow cooker. Before we go any further, I should tell you that I am, generally speaking, not a big fan of slow cooker recipes or things they make. So I went online, and looked at a bunch of recipes for beef stew, picked out one, and made it. It was pretty good, but not great.
Let’s skip ahead to a few days after Thanksgiving. I was with a couple of my friends, and we were talking about the joy and perfection of leftovers. My friend Riley told me that she likes to take pretty much all of the leftovers, from the turkey to the stuffing to the potatoes to the gravy, and dump it all into a slow cooker with some chicken stock to make a stew. Remember how I wasn’t all that into slow cooker things like 100 words ago? I changed my mind.
I thought about what she said, and then I thought about all the different recipes I’d looked at several weeks earlier. I realized that there were a few basic things that made stew … uh, stew, and that there’s no need to be precise when making it. You could just put all your Thanksgiving leftovers into a slow cooker, for instance, and turn them into a stew that’s perfect for eating with some crusty bread.
And that’s how I decided to take from my memory all the things I liked about the stew recipes I read back in like September, to make my own slow cooker stew a few nights ago. Here’s my basic recipe:
Reasonably Good Beef Stew
Before we get our ingredients together, let’s get something clear: this isn’t precise. This is a bunch of ideas and guidelines, because we’re going to imagine that we’re in the Long Long Ago, putting together all the stuff that we have on hand so that we can feed ourselves and the giant family we have because it’s the Long Long Ago and basically we make children for entertainment.
Walk outside and make sure that your summoning circle is clear of debris, especially pointy sticks. Double check to ensure that your hemp rope was braided beneath the light of a full moon, and has seven knots in it. Spit on the doorframe as you walk back into the house, and clap twice when the door closes and latches.
Then go to the store and get:
- 2 pounds of steak that’s cut up into cubes. Your local store probably sells it as BEEF FOR STEW OR WHATEVER. Don’t waste super good steak on this, because that stuff is better on the grill.
- 2 parsnips.
- 3 carrots
- 2 boring old regular potatoes or like four medium red potatoes. You may be tempted to use both kinds. That’s fine, but just know that it’s easy to overdo it with starchy vegetables.
- About a half pound of crimini mushrooms. Don’t use stupid button mushrooms because they’re lame and boring and did I mention that they’re stupid? Crimini mushrooms are more complex in flavor, and give lots of opportunities for you to hike your pants up way too high and make dad jokes that use the word “Criminey!”
- Three cloves of garlic.
- One medium onion. You can use white or yellow. Don’t use red because they don’t soften up the right way and they’re kinda bossy in the cooker, overwhelming all the other flavors.
- 2-3 tablespoons of tomato paste.
- 1 cup of red wine. You can use cooking wine if you want, but I prefer to use drinking wine, even though I don’t drink it. But if you do, hey! Free wine to drink while you’re making dinner! If you wanted to substitute Guinness for the wine, you can do that, as well, and make this as more of a Guinness stew.
- 1 tablespoon paprika.
- 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
- All the flour in the world (you’re only going to use like 1/3 cup and a little more to coat the beef, but you’ll be thankful you stocked up on flour after President Tiny Hands starts a nuclear war).
- 3 stalks of celery. Some people call these things “Celery Ribs” which is so fucking pretentious I want to cut them into celery spears and stab them in their smarty pants faces.
- At least 32 ounces of beef stock. You will probably want a little more, but it’s not necessary. Maybe you can barter with a neighbor, using some of your excess flour.
Welcome back from the store! Take a quick look at your summoning circle and light the candles. Wrap the rope around a stump and tie one end to piece of driftwood that was collected from the east shore of a lake during the solstice.
Okay! Let’s get ready to cook. You can add a little salt and pepper to these steps whenever you feel like it. I try not to use too much salt because I don’t like it and it doesn’t like me.
First, peel the onion, and chop it up into little onion hunks. Peel and mince the garlic. Then, wash all the other vegetables and cut them up however you want. Some folks like to slice their potatoes, others prefer to quarter them and then half the quarters. I realize I could have said “cut the potatoes into eighths”, but if I did that I would expect to be stabbed with a celery spear. You can keep the stems on the mushrooms if you want, but I prefer to take them off, mostly because it’s fun to pop the caps off the mushrooms and put them on the carrots like little hats. Try it! You can make the carrots do a play for you before you murder them and eat them. Just like mom did!
Put a little olive oil (like a tablespoon or so) into a nonstick skillet, and heat it up. When it’s warm, add about half the onion and all the garlic. Cook it, stirring frequently, until the onions are translucent and the garlic is fragrant. If you want to get all advanced, you can get an extra teaspoon of paprika and dump it in when you add the onions.
While the onions are doing their thing, put the beef into a bowl and dump just enough flour into it so that you can toss them around, and coat them with it. Sprinkle the tablespoon of paprika over them and keep tossing until they are pretty well coated with the flour and paprika. You may have to add a little flour, don’t worry about it.
Once the beef is all covered, and the onions are ready, add the beef to the pan, taking care not to dump any of the excess flour in with it. Stir it all around a little bit, and then forget about it for a couple of minutes while it cooks. Oh, I forgot to mention that you’re using like a medium-high heat. What you’re going for is to brown the meat without cooking it all the way through, so use whatever heat you think is appropriate for that.
After like four minutes, mix it all up again, and try to get the beef cubes to turn over. You can do this by saying, “Roll over, beef!” or you can use tongs to turn it, or a spatula, or a wooden spoon. Do not use a crazy straw because it will melt, and do not use telekinesis because you will splash oil all over the damn place.
After another four or so minutes, dump all of that stuff out of the pan and into your slow cooker. Put the lid on to keep it warm.
Now you’re going to warm up a little bit more olive oil in the pan. When it’s warm, take your tomato paste, starting with two tablespoons, and gently, carefully, put it into the pan. Don’t scoop it out of the tomato paste thingy with a spoon and just drop it in like I did, because it’ll splash the oil all over your Sex Pistols T-shirt and stain it which is not as punk rock now as you thought it was when you were a teenager. You can still be punk rock and have a clean shirt, for crying out loud.
I like to use a wooden spoon for this, but you don’t have to. Use something to stir it around and really spread it out until it goes from bright red to like a brick red color. Now pour in the wine, and like a half cup of beef broth. Stir this all together, and get ready for some magic to happen. Very slowly and gently start easing in a little bit of flour at a time, whisking it into the mixture. You’re making a gravy right now, and if you dump all the flour in at once, it’s going to make it all lumpy and they’re all gonna laugh at you. Careful that you don’t let the mixture burn.
After you’ve mixed it all together and whisked away the lumps, it should be smooth and look like gravy why not. When it does, turn off the heat and set it aside.
Take the potatoes and put them in a single layer over the meat that’s in your slow cooker. Then do the same thing with the carrots, and then dump all the other vegetables in. Now take the gravy and pour it over the top of everything.
Have a brief moment of panic because there isn’t nearly enough liquid in there to make it a stew, and then remember that you have that 32 ounces of beef stock that you used the flour to barter for. Pour it all into the slow cooker. If it covers or almost covers the stuff inside, you’re done. If it doesn’t, you can either add a little bit of water or more broth until it does.
How long this cooks is up to you. You can cook it on high heat for at least 4 hours, or you can cook it on a lower heat for up to 12 hours. The important thing is that the beef cooks and any evil bacteria who are living in there with plans to make you shit yourself to death are killed before they get a chance to do their sinful business.
I like to serve this with some hunks of fresh bread that I baked that day, and I like to garnish it with a little bit of chopped parsley. You can do whatever you want, though, including dropping some sour cream in there, maybe some plain yogurt, a little bit of Tabasco or Worcestershire sauce, or even more salt and pepper. The important thing is that you don’t worry too much about precision, and you don’t rush it. Think of it as making out for the first time but just a little more awkward and a lot less messy.
Enjoy your stew, and don’t forget to take a bowl out to your summoning circle to feed the demon. Make sure you feed it no less than five spoonfuls before the first rising of the new moon before you set it free. If you have any leftovers, they can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days, because this stuff reheats really well.
Tina, my girlfriend, made a wonderful pork stew. Turns out it’s nothing like beef stew. It was excellent.
My only comment here is that if you don’t add a bay leaf while its simmering, you’re missing out! Otherwise, sounds pretty damned good.
Sounds delicious and thanks for the hording tips!
I like the way your recipes are written… Very enjoyable ☺️ I might have to try it (says garlic and paprika because my son is allergic to them).
I’m sure this turned out well. I’m a fan of slow cookers, mostly because I have lots of stuff I have to do, and sometimes I like knowing that dinner is ready. Also, leftovers mean dinner is ready (from the freezer) a few more times. I made excellent stew two days ago. 3 pounds stew beef, 1/2 packet frozen pearl onions. 1/2 packet baby carrots, 1 bag very small gold potatoes. one packet slow cooker pot roast seasoning. 2 cups red wine (I also like drinking wine, and I do drink the rest). Stirred it all up, cooked it on low for the day. so 7 to 8 hours. served with crusty bread, and have several dinners in the freezer. Of course, I am a 60 year old woman who, while wishing she had all the time in the world, knows that she does not. Any other veggies would be fine. 32 ounces of liquid seems like an awful lot, but I don’t particularly care for soupy stew…
Ewww. Garlic. You do realise that garlic works as a laxative for some people? If I eat this, I’d be spending the rest of the day in a small, stinky room. (Well, it will be stinky when I am in there doing my business.) So please, no garlic for me! 🙂
When I cook steak (well, roast it, actually), I prefer to use red port instead of wine. It has a stronger flavor and a bit more alcohol.
In Dutch, we don’t call it steak but we call it a Sucadelap. I think it’s called Butlers’ Steak or Flat Iron Steak in English, although I’m not sure it’s the same piece of beef. It is a tough piece of meat that can get real tender when you cook it right. If done properly, it will fall apart into fiber-like cuts. It’s a piece of meat from the shoulder of cattle and lies against the shoulder blade. This is the best piece for making stew. It also has a nice marbling that add to the flavor.
This is the funniest recipe I’ve ever read. Well worth giving a go, too.
Thank you for that – I love cooking and adapting recipes, but I have NEVER read one that made me laugh that hard (or ever?). Please promise me you will write a cookbook someday… Happy New Year!
Have you considered wearing an apron while doing the browning and cooking bits? Might make it a little easier to keep oil off your shirt.
Thanks for this episode of ‘Cooking with Wil’! Sounds like a fantastic recipe.
Wil your next book should be a cook book written like that. It was super funny. 🙂
What about the right cooking voice? Should I use my Stewie Griffin voice, or Swedish Chef, or …?
A stew with ‘taters in it is best prepared using your finest Shire Hobbit accent
Your recipes are pure gold, and this one is another delightful ingot.
Great recipe, I’ll be trying it soon. I look forward to bartering with you (wood for sheep?) come the Trumpocalypse.
Hooray, the second recipe for the cookbook! I made beef stew last week; so nummy on a cold day.
Well darn, I LOVE this recipe but JD can’t eat beef so no stew for Janey. (sad face)
I second the request for a cookbook though!
The beef stew recipe I use calls for both red wine and Guinness. So there. Hic.
I like to put in turnip but I’ll try the parsnips. Great recipe. Thanks.
I never use a slow cooker. Instead, I use a pressure cooker. Here’s my recipe:
1kg stewing beef (~2lbs) (can substitute 250g (1/2 lb) beef kidney for some beef) – cubed
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 large carrots, diced smallish
Beef stock
Salt/pepper/oil
Thyme/bay leaf
In the pressure cooker, fry the onions, carrots, and beef until everything is caramelised (not burned, but kinda almost).
Barely cover with beef stock. If using a beef stock cube or jelly, err on the side of making it stronger than recommend).
Throw in the herbs, add salt & pepper according to taste, and pressure cook on the high setting for 45 minutes.
Done. The meat will be falling apart and everything will taste yummy.
Enjoy. I use this filling for pies too, but I use a potatoe masher to break down the meat chunks first. Not necessary, but it means you get more meat in each pie!
P.s. if using as a stew, serve with mashed potatoes.
Hiya Will,
Dude, thank you for sharing this recipe. It was wonderful to read, sounds delicious aaaaannnd you had me giggling about those mushrooms. Nearly dropped the PADD in the tub. Well.. I know what I’ll be making up next week. I wonder how well it does in a crock pot?
That’s hie my grandmother made hers! Thank you for that memory.
This is possibly the best recipe writing I’ve ever read – and I’ve read a lot of recipes. Have started saving my money for when the Wil Wheaton cookbook comes out 🙂
Now that you’re on Twitch, sounds like you need to do a cooking stream on “Creative”!
Ok, so I set one bowl in the summoning circle for the demon, but was windy as fuck today and it blew down the street along with the recycling bins and my neighbors garbage. Why be garbage/recycling day if it can’t be windy as fuck? So I set out a second bowl, and it froze because it’s also cold as fuck outside today.
I am just gonna eat some soup because as it occurs to me I have strep throat and need to fucking rest, not put bowls of damn stew out for some demon who has clearly already visited me, my husband and my children. DO YOUR WORST, DEMON.
Please don’t stab people who talk about celery ribs! They’re not being pretentious; they’re making an important distinction which I didn’t learn until I was more than 50 years old, and not knowing it meant that I gave lots of people lots of bad cooking directions over the years before I learned better.
A celery stalk is the thing you buy at the grocery. Lots of folks call it a bunch, but it’s properly called a stalk. That stalk is made up of fifteen or twenty or whatever ribs, which you break off the stalk and chop or mince or fill with peanut butter and put onto a crudité tray to ambush poor unsuspecting partygoers.
So if you tell someone “chop three stalks of celery,” they’ll have more damn celery than they know what to do with.
Wil, please for the love of all things holy, start making cooking videos. You have obviously have superpowers, use then for good. The universe will thank you.
I second this motion.
This would be a great idea. Since brewing has taken to the back burner maybe we could get some “Wil Gets Excited and Cooks Something” episodes.
You recipes are my absolute favourite writing that you do, it makes me literally laugh out loud and hungry at the same time. What more could a girl want? I hope you write more recipes in the future, they’re brilliant. If you ever released a cookbook I’d buy the shit out of it. You’re an excellent human, Wil! 🙂
I am the only person in the world who hates leftovers. Just can’t stand the smell of cold food that’s meant to be hot, as in leftovers taken from the fridge before you reheat them. Puts me right off. I do love a good stew, though, from fresh (not leftover) ingredients. Definitely recommend leaving the carrots unpeeled because it adds a nice earthy taste.
If you were to write a cookbook I’d read it, not because I need yet another one but because this recipe was highly entertaining.
“you’ll be thankful you stocked up on flour after President Tiny Hands starts a nuclear war.”
And that will only be his internal hiring policy escalating when HUD is a bit unreasonable towards his demands…
Sounds good, I’ll have to give it a try.
WTF WillWheaton, are you trying to steal the thunder of the most excellent food blog Another Cup of Lamb’s Blood (http://anothercupoflambsblood.blogspot.com/2016/11/cooking-perfect-souffle.html)? Hairy Christmush and their 8 followers will gladly kick your ass in an ‘engage in fisticuffs’ manner. The demons of culinary do OUR bidding.
Is that a COW on your plate?!
Nope, just the ass-part of a cow… 🙂
Two things:
A. For the love of God please write a cookbook. I could read recipes and cook instructions like this all day long.
2. “You can still be punk rock and have a clean shirt”?!? When did you abandon the true faith Wil?
Excellent recipe! Even better commentary. You’ve made reading this so much better. Ever thought of doing a cookbook?
Add a bay leaf or two to make things blend better. One can splash Apple Cider (not juice) instead of wine or beer. If using beer – darker and cheaper the better.
Preferably dark, Belgium beers… 🙂
I’m not saying that you should put out a self deprecating cookbook of the recipes you’ve posted on your blog (I am not the boss of you……..yet). But I am daring you to.
Very enjoyable recipe, might downsize and give it a try. I only have a tiny 1.5 litre slow cooker (no idea how much that would be in quarts, we do metrics here in Germany) which I had to order from the UK. Because slow cookers are not a thing in Germany. Seriously. Super hard to find, and most people I know never heard of it. Got mine upon recommendation from US friends (they even picked the model for me) when I whined how the new shifts in my retail job basically had me be always hangry. Slow cooker helped a lot, I love it so much I rebought the exact same model the very same day when I set the last one on fire (yes. literally. don’t ask how). Now I have soups (Asian style carrot soup today =9), goulash, stews, broth, bolognese and the like all the time.
A litre is 1.06 quarts, so your cooker is effectively 1½ quarts as well.
@Daswolli
I don’t see the problem with getting your hands on a “Schongarer” (that’s how Wiki translates Slow Cooker, but Crock Pot will help some too if you search for it) even though living in Germany, as long as you’ve got access to the internet (which is pretty obviously so as you’re posting on a website/blog)… the usual online sellers have DOZENS of models in many different sizes from 1l to 7l or so. almost 2 gallons should be enough for any recipe Wil might ever come up with for himself…
Try adding a tablespoon or two of Worcestershire Sauce or a similar amount of a good cocoa powder (NOT hot chocolate mix!), it can add an interesting depth of flavor. Start low and add more as you get used to using them. You can also add them to a batch of red chilli to good effect. And for that matter, you can add an eighth of a teaspoon of chili powder to a mug of quality hot chocolate to good effect, if you are such a person.
Worcestershire Sauce? Delicious, until I learned that they make it from fermented fish. 🙂
How does that change the flavor?
If discoveries like this make you not eat things don’t look up what “natural flavors” means for processed foods.
Well, it doesn’t change the flavor. Thing is, I don’t want to eat fish. Beef, pig, mutton, fine. Fish? Ewwww…
I still like Worcestershire Sauce but just don’t use it anymore.
But Castoreum is delicious! I love the taste it gives to ice cream! 😀 And I don’t care that it’s made from the ass end of beavers. Steak is also cut from the ass end of cows, so no big difference there… 🙂
Wil, I love the recipes you post, but I will not be likely to try this particular one. When I use my Crock Pot, I like it to do ALL of the cooking for me. I hate having to get oil (especially tomato-ey oil) splashed onto my nonexistent Sex Pistols t-shirt, if the whatever-I’m-doing-in-a-pan-on-the-stove is going to end up in the slow cooker anyway!
One pot meals, baby. One. Pot. You should try it. 🙂
Yeah, I get ya. You can totally skip the gravy part of this, and just reduce the amount of beef stock by about half … though I’m not sure if the steak cubes would cook all the way through without putting them in the pan, first.
I think the steak cubes would cook all the way as long as you cook them long enough. I usually start mine before work and leave it on low until I get home. So whatever it is cooks from 7:30 to 5:30.
A tip for getting your Sex Pistols shirt clean: put a few drops of dishwashing liquid on the oil stain and scrub it in with an old toothbrush. Next time you do laundry, just throw it in and wash as usual. It should come out just fine.
How many servings does your recipe make? I was unsure if this was for one, two, or many. I’m going to make it tonight for my family so wanted to know if I need to adjust the ingredients to feed more people.
This was way too much for Anne and me. I guess it made enough to serve like six people? It sort of depends on how much you want to eat.
Six is a very probable answer … looking at all the thousands of recipes I’ve collected on my hard drive across the years (yes, thousands–something like 13,000-plus atm) six servings appears as nearly a default option.
I let the slow cooker cook (long times, long times, always low heat). And as long as the meat is as warm as the rest, I don’t mind if it’s rare-medium.
Pro-tip: Get a suitably-sized plastic food bag and put your seasoned flour in it. Put in your cubes of meat. Twist the open end of the bag shut and shake it like you’re making a big meaty martini. In no time at all, you have a bag of perfectly even-coated meat. (A trick my mother taught me).
I totally heard this in the voice of Earl Harlan
I came here to say what they said.
If you haven’t already, please strongly consider writing or co-authoring or even just offering commentary in a cookbook. Cookbooks could use a little more spice (pun intended).
Fennel generally makes a really good celery substitute. I’ve never tried it in a stew, but it has a stronger flavor than celery, so maybe minus one stalk? It’s delicious.