Nothing quite beats the slow cooker when you want a delicious meal that you don’t have to babysit. This stew cooks for four hours but takes only ten minutes of your time to assemble the ingredients and place them into the cooker.
Because of its unique prep time and cooking duration you can have this as a lunch or dinner depending on when you have time to make it. Get it started in the morning and it will be ready for lunch. Start it at lunch and it will be waiting for you at dinnertime. You could even get it all put together at breakfast, pop it in the fridge until lunch and then turn it on at lunchtime to have it for dinner if you just don’t have any extra time at lunch.
Picking out the right beef to go in your beef stew is crucial. Round steak tastes great, and you can sometimes find it on sale so it can be an inexpensive and delicious meal that doesn’t require a lot of effort. While just about any beef will work, the better the quality, the better the result, so it’s good to search out a great cut that’s made for stews.
The rest of the stew contains a mix of ingredients that you’d find in a nice roast. Carrots, celery, peppers, and sweet potatoes filling in for white potatoes so there’s an assortment of veggies. Each item gets cooked just right in the slow cooker, so you get silky soft carrots that aren’t mushy, and delicate potatoes that have a soft texture but still hold their form.
A slow cooker fits right into the Paleo mentality. It’s the type of cooking style our early ancestors would have had access to and it doesn’t involve any fancy cooking skills. Just time and patience and a roundup of healthy ingredients. Since it’s cooked at a low heat for several hours you don’t run the risk of burning anything and worrying if it’s going to turn out right or not. A low-stress way of cooking that’s suitable for just about anyone.
You might find that you end up having this stew more often after you make it the first time. That’s because it’s so satisfying and easy to make that it lends itself to becoming a weekly favorite. You can pick the busiest night of the week and never have to worry about making dinner on the fly again.
One thing to keep in mind is that it’s a complete meal so you won’t have to worry about making a side dish to go with it. Sometimes it can be a little hectic if you have a main entree going and have to cook up a side dish to go along with it. This recipe uses just one pot to cook it in and then one bowl per person to eat it up. Easy clean up!
Ingredients
- 1 pound beef round steak, cubed
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 2 medium red onions, finely chopped
- 1 cup diced celery
- 2 cups diced ripe tomatoes
- 1 cup diced sweet potato
- ½ cup diced red pepper
- ½ cup diced yellow pepper
- 1 cup diced carrot
- 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 3 cups homemade beef stock or water
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
- salt and black pepper, to taste
Directions
- In a large pan heat 2 tbsp olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and saute for 2 minutes. Add beef cubes and cook until browned, about 3-4 minutes.
- In a 6-qt slow cooker or French oven, combine meat and onion mixture, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, carrot, peppers, celery, bay leaves and stock. Cover with lid and cook on low heat for 4 hours. Then uncover, stir in fresh herbs, season with salt and black pepper and serve.
We just loved this wonderful recipe. So easy and just so tasty. Fabulous. Will pass it on to our daughters. Thank you.