5-Hour Stew

 5-Hour Stew

    Alright, alright, alright! This is another recipe from the 75th Anniversary Hy-Vee cookbook. I liked that this recipe was super easy. The first thing I did was prep the vegetables, by cleaning and peeling the carrots and potatoes; cleaning the celery and peeling the outer layer of the onion. The recipe says to cube the carrots and potatoes, so I did as best I could. The onion and celery I just chopped. 

       The stew meat was already cut into chunks, so I didn't have anything to do there.  Why not buy the package of pre-cut chunked meat, if you can? Again, this recipe was so easy. I put the vegetables in my cast iron dutch oven, mixed them around, added the meat, the cup of tomato juice and 3 tablespoons of tapioca. The recipe calls for Minute (brand) tapioca, but I simply couldn't find any brand of tapioca pearls anywhere, so had to buy a box off of Amazon.  The last two ingredients are salt and pepper, which you add to your personal taste.  I prefer to salt and pepper my food when I plate it, so I didn't add any during cooking.  

    So, that's it! I put the cover on my dutch oven and placed it in my oven, which I had pre-heated to 250 degrees.  As I think I've mentioned before, my oven is wonky and I had to guess at the temperature, but I think I did good, because at the end of the five hour cooking time, when I took that lid off, it looked pretty perfect.  I had that stews were "soupy", but this one isn't, there's only one cup of liquid added, so it wasn't "soupy".  I'll have you know my house smelled really good and the stew was delicious. 

    This would make a perfect meal with a nice, crusty french bread, garlic bread or rolls and a side salad.  I really liked this dish, because of how easy it was. The five hours was a long cook time, but the recipe also says it can be made in a crock-pot. There was no time give for making it in a crock-pot, so maybe still five hours? On low? Or maybe, eight hours on low? So, maybe it is one of those things you can prep the night before, toss in your crock-pot, go to work and then come home to a delicious meal all ready for you. 

    Would I make this recipe again? 100% I would make this again and I wouldn't change anything about it. You could get several servings out of this, but I don't like to say how many, because you know we don't all take the same size serving. IF I had to hazard a guess, I'd say at least 4-5 servings.  So, I hope you try this one out.  Let me know how you like it.