Well, Darlings, famous if you lived in the Fab’s family growing up.  Famous in a bad way actually, because (Mary) who could have chosen any meal for her birthday dinner (a family tradition) chose Beef Stew instead of Harris Pizza which everyone else invariably chose, except for one of the Fab’s sisters, who picked lasagna, but I guess everyone liked lasagna. Not everyone liked beef stew.  The Fab has no idea why that would be, but…  The choice of beef stew  invoked endless complaining, jeers and other forms of sibling — stuff.  The Fab didn’t care, she LOVES beef stew.  In retrospect, however, Harris Pizza, as it turns out, is the singularly most perfect pizza in the whole world and the Fab has to drive more than 400 miles to taste it now, but can have beef stew any time that she wants to.

Things have a way of switchin’ round in life, it is a known fact.

Anywho.

Beef Stew

Cook in a Crock Pot on low

Tools that you will need:

A Crock Pot

A heavy skillet

possibly a Cooking Knife (for cubing beef and or cutting up veggies)

a Vegetable Peeler (or a paring knife)

a  fork (nothing fancy, just a dinner fork)

INGREDIENTS:

(In the order that you are going to need them, but you know to read through to make sure that you have everything before you start?  Of course you know that.)

a few tablespoons of cooking oil (just enough to coat the bottom of your skillet)

1 cup all purpose FLOUR

1-1/2 teaspoon GROUND BLACK PEPPER

1-1/2 teaspoon SEASONED SALT (Lawry’s is best — but if you prefer something else …?)

coupla shakes of CELERY SEED

coupla shakes of GARLIC POWDER (you are mixing this all in with the flour so yes, the powder)

coupla shakes of ONION POWDER (see note above on the garlic powder)

2 pounds BEEF CHUCK  cut in cubes.   – Darlings, you can buy “stewing beef” pre-cubed at the meat counter — but take a little peek at the price per pound compared to the price of a chunk o’ chuck.  Darlings, you can take 5 minutes with a knife and cube your own beef, now can’t you?

4 cups WATER or BEEF STOCK

A Bay Leaf

POTATOES (Idaho Russets), CARROTS, and CELERY cleaned, peeled and cut into bite sized pieces

an ONION cut into quarters

Worcestershire Sauce (’bout a tablespoon, more or less, start with less work your way up – optional, adds a kick)

Kitchen Bouquet (a few drops – optional, bottled liquid, adds golden brown color — who wants pasty looking stew? Found in either the baking or the sauces aisle)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in your heavy skillet.  If you are going to take forever to assemble the next step, wait until after you have completed the next step to heat the oil, over heated oil smokes, sets off the smoke alarm, and can catch fire which makes the oil taste bad and may cause the fire department to appear.

As the Fab hinted at above mix the FLOUR, PEPPER, SEASONED SALT, CELERY SEED, GARLIC POWDER, and ONION POWDER together in a large plastic bag (if you are going to wash it out and use it again – otherwise use a brown paper lunch bag which will compost along with the potato and carrot peelings right?) ¹  Place the beef cubes into the bag, close, shake until the cubes are evenly coated. Remove the beef cubes from the bag, it doesn’t matter if some of the extra flour and spices sticks to your hands and falls into the skillet in the next step, but there will be left-over flour and spices in the bag.  Shake the left over flour into the compost pile or the trash bin, do not run it down the drain. ²

Place the coated beef cubes in the skillet on medium heat, brown on all sides. (The purpose of this step is to start the beef cooking, but also to cook the flour in fat, so that when it is mixed with the liquid in the crock pot, the flour will thicken the liquid into gravy.  Don’t skip this step and just add the beef and flour to the crock pot without browning, uncooked flour tastes like library paste.)

Place the browned beef cubes into the crock pot, pour in the water or beef stock add the bay leaf.  Cook on low for 2 or so hours (at least 2 – could be 3 or 4 if you are going to add the veggies on your lunch break).  After 2 (or 3 or 4) hours, add  the potatoes, carrots, celery and quartered onion.  Cover and cook an additional 2 hours (or so … beef stew is forgiving).  Just before serving, stab the potatoes and carrots with the fork to make sure that they are done, add the Worcestershire Sauce (or not), adjust your salt and pepper, add the Kitchen Bouquet for color. Serve in big bowls.  Don’t listen to anyone that complains that they would rather have Harris Pizza.