Homemade meat stew

How to make a homemade meat stew .

Cooking stews, today I present you a classic  homemade meat stew.

A recipe just as my grandmother Lucrecia prepared it in her wood stove in Galicia over low heat. Made with care and very slowly How many wonders come out of that kitchen!

In these meat recipes time and patience are going to be essential for this beef stew to come out yummy. It is also important that the meat we buy is of very good quality, since it is the main ingredient.

I have chosen black pudding or ossobuco meat if it goes with the bone (I already told you about it in the jarrete recipe ), because it is a very juicy, tender and slightly gelatinous beef.

This stew recipe is very versatile for the day to day because it can be taken as a single dish. It feels great in winter and it also holds up very well in the fridge. If you can prepare it the day before, it will be even richer than just made. If you like this type of dishes, be sure to check other stew recipes .

We can call this recipe stew or stew . In the stew the ingredients are cooked in a pot or casserole with a lid, something like suffocating them (from the French Etouffée , which comes from Etouffer = suffocate ).

With this you get to cook with the juices of food. In the stew, however, we fry them and cook them in their own sauce without covering the casserole. So the liquid is cut in half or even more.

While researching, I also discovered that one of the first books on Spanish cuisine is entitled “The Book of Stews” (1477, Ruperto de Nola). People who cooked stews were known as stews. So today we will all be stewing . What do you think?

Preparation of Grandma Lucrecia’s style stew

1. When buying the meat ask the butcher to cut it into regular pieces for stew and to clean it, to remove the excess fat. You will have a few pieces of 20 g more or less.
2. We prepare the meat. Season with salt and pepper, add the spices and go through the flour. We reserve.
3. Peel the garlic and chop very finely.
4. Heat the extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan, add the garlic and then add the meat. We mark the pieces of blood sausage until they are well browned, the meat will begin to release part of its juice. We remove the meat and reserve.
5. Chop the onions. Fry the onion in the same oil where we brown the meat for about 10 minutes over low heat.
6. Peel the carrots and the tomatoes. We reserve.
7. Cut the carrots into slices as thin as possible and the tomatoes into quarters. Add these ingredients and a few peas to the onion sauce and stir everything well with a wooden spoon, mixing the flavors.
8. When the sauce is well browned, add the pieces of black pudding with the garlic. We add the glass of white wine (a Ribeiro, Albariño, a Pedro Ximénez, a little cognac or if you like powerful, red wine). I leave you with a video of a stew similar to this, so you can see tips and tricks for this recipe.

Final preparation of the stew. Cooking

1. Add the bay leaves and rectify salt and pepper. Let it reduce a little, about 10-15 minutes over medium heat. To give more color to your stew you can use a few strands of saffron or a pinch of food coloring.
2. We cover everything with the meat broth (which we have previously heated) and the glass of water.
3. We cook over low heat until the liquid is reduced and the meat is tender. About an hour and a quarter or so, it depends a lot on the type of meat. You should try the meat and stir occasionally so that it does not stick to the bottom of the casserole.

With potatoes in their cooking or fried potatoes. Final presentation

1. You can prepare the stew with or without potatoes. If you are going to prepare a large quantity, it is better not to add potatoes, so we can freeze in complete safety. We will avoid that later they remain mealy and spoil the stew.
2. If you choose this advice, you can always dice or classic potatoes into sticks and fry them. It will be a perfect accompaniment outside the stew, although they will add much more calories to the dish. In this way, the best option is to prepare some fried potatoes to accompany.
3. If you want the classic stew with potatoes integrated into the cooking, this is the 2nd option. When there are approximately 25 minutes of cooking, add the potatoes in quarters, thus preventing them from falling apart. It is very important to take maximum care of the cooking of the potatoes so that they are whole without breaking, but at the same time tender inside.
4. If you prepare it the day before, the best way to heat it is to use the same saucepan over very low heat, stirring occasionally.
5. We serve very hot and with a little bread, the sauce in this recipe is great.

I hope you like it and prepare it at home. Another simple and ideal recipe now that it is cold dear stews, you know what I like a good stew or stew.

You can see in this step by step how to prepare this recipe for meat stew , I am sure you will prepare it on many occasions.