A Lovely Stew

Last night we dined on homemade stew and corn muffins. It was delicious. It feels so good to make a meal that is nourishing and man pleasing. Do you ever feel proud when you make something delicious from scratch? Maybe proud isn't the right word, but it does certainly feel good.

Here's my man pleasing stew recipe. I started making this a few years ago when we first moved out. It is a wonderful crock pot recipe, however I have even made it in a dutch oven over an open fire. I am not a red meat person by any means so I always add extra potatoes and carrots to fill my bowl.

A Lovely Stew (with some measurements and some estimating)

stewing beef, the best stuff you can find
chicken stock, I used half of a carton of what I had left. Any stock would do nicely in this recipe, especially some homemade stuff.
handful of potatoes, quartered
2 tomatoes chopped roughly
carrots, sliced
1.5 cups of beer
1 pepper minced (you could also throw in an onion)
spices, thyme, dill, sage and parsley
celtic sea salt and pepper

I leave this on about 1o hours on low in my crock pot.

I start with the crock.


Then throw in the pepper. Everything cooks down so much I don't worry about making it pretty.


Now take some beautiful potatoes.


And quarter them.


And throw it all in the crock. Chop up some carrots too. Not sure where my carrot photo got to.


Dice up some tomatoes. They add a lot of goodness and depth to the soup.


Now for the spices. This is my wonderful dill that I dried in my dehydrator recently. I took pictures of the process to post but I have been using my beau's camera lately instead of our older one and I can't seem to get it to work with dill. It refuses to take pictures of dill. Odd, yes, and it is likely something I am doing wrong. So this is the blurry dill.


Beautiful organic Watkins spices.


Now throw some broth into the mix. I used about half a container.


Grab your stewing beef. Ethical beef makes for happy cows!



In goes the beer!


You could also sub red wine for the beer and that would be amazing.

Stir it all together and pop the lid on!


Now wait, awhile..

Mmm..


I scooped some of the carrots, tomatoes and peppers out and pureed them to add a bit more depth to the broth. I think this is why the soup does have almost an orang-y tinge.


Wholesome goodness.

Would you like a corn muffin to go with yours?


Perhaps 3?


Have a wonderful Thursday.

Loves!