I will admit I have never attempted to make beef stew.  I am not a beef eater but I found a good sale of stew meat and thought my family must be tired of stir fries I ought to try a beef stew.  I make chicken stew all the time how much harder can it be?

My first challenge was finding a beef base that wasn’t full of salt,  I normally buy pacific organic chicken and vegetable broth which utilizes sea salt which I am fine with when I have to do high sodium.    so after searching I finally found some Swanson that used sea salt.  it wasn’t organic but it didn’t have msg or gluten/dairy/soy which most beef broths have at least one of those.

I put the beef broth in the crock pot along with 1/4 of a pound of cut up beef chunks that had been browned with 1 full onion.    I placed two cut up potatoes and a handful of baby carrots cut into thirds with two celery stalks..   I ended up adding some more sea salt, pepper, and some all-purpose seasoning as I just didn’t find this flavorful but it ended up being very good.   about an hour before serving I took two cups of the broth (which was thin) and added some liquid cornstarch and thickened it to a gravy and put back into the crock pot.  this made the base a tad thicker but not so thick it was gross.

I served with some Scharr ciabatta rolls.  It was quite yummy.

Easier than I ever imagined.  I enjoyed having the soup minus all the beef chucks and was amazed that this actually fed three people with leftovers for another night.    I stretched my ingredients which is what I am always looking for.   The price of food these days one has to be careful of waste and learn how to make meals that stretch.

how do you make your beef stew, I would love to have some new recipes for future pots!