Can Shelf-Stable Beef Stew Really Taste This Good?

Today’s recipe is for a shelf-stable beef stew. It’s got classic flavors with hearty beef dices, potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery in a rich, beefy brown gravy / broth. Perfect for a chilly day or pretty much any time. I’m trying the crinkle cut freeze dried carrots from Freeze Dry Wholesalers in here, and spoiler alert: they’re fantastic!! I hope this recipe makes it into your rotation. It’s definitely a keeper!

Since Thrive Life has closed, I’m sampling freeze dried food from other companies in an on-going search for a replacement. I am an affiliate for these 2 so far: Wise Harvest and Thrivalist

For Wise Harvest, here’s my shopping link:
https://shop.wiseharvestfreezedriedfoods.com/FDFOODIE
Use coupon code FDFOODIE15 to get 15% off your order. You should get free shipping on orders over $100.
I really like their pineapple, dragon fruit, coconut, bananas, and mango.

For Thrivalist, there is a limited time sample pack listed under their Foods section. You’ll get 14 different freeze dried or dehydrated foods to try as well as access to a $597 survival course for only $29. They have lots of other food as well, under the Ready Harvest brand. Here is my link:
https://thrivalist.com/?ref=FDFOODIE
I really like their corn, strawberries, and the sweet potatoes were good too.

As member of these affiliate programs, I may receive a commission on all qualifying purchases made through my links at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

Whether you’re prepping for an emergency, looking for convenient and nutritious ingredients, or trying to eliminate food waste from your home, freeze dried foods offer a wonderful, shelf-stable alternative to regular groceries. But cooking with them can be a bit daunting if you’re unfamiliar with how to use them. I’m here to help! On my channel, I love to open up cans of freeze dried food for use in everyday cooking as well as for mixes and meals in jars for long-term pantry storage. I have hundreds of recipes on my channel, so hopefully I’ve got something for everyone!

https://thefreezedriedfoodie.com -Purchase my e-book cookbooks here!
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Classic Beef Stew
pint jar (2 servings)
2/3 cup FD beef dices
1/3 cup FD mushrooms (optional – use other veggies if you prefer)
1/3 cup FD mirepoix (or 2 Tbsp each FD onions, celery, and carrots)
1/3 cup FD potato dices
3 Tbsp espagnole sauce mix
1 Tbsp tomato sauce mix
1/2 tsp FD Litehouse parsley
1/2 tsp FD Litehouse thyme (or rosemary or both)
1/2 tsp beef bouillon
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 bay leaf
then fill the jar with extra veggies like the crinkle cut carrots from Freeze Dry Wholesalers or FD zucchini, FD peas, or just more FD potatoes or FD beef… just so your jar is full.

To Prepare:
Empty contents of the jar into a med/large soup pot. Add 4 cups water and stir. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Add 1/4 cup red wine, optional. Once it’s reached a boil, stir well and reduce temp to medium. Simmer for about 20 mins or until veggies are fully cooked. Taste and adjust seasonings. Garnish with fresh parsley and enjoy with some crusty French bread or cornbread. Enjoy!

#freezedried #affiliateprogram #beefstewrecipe

[Music] Today’s recipe is an oldie but a goodie. It’s an update on my classic beef stew meal in a jar recipe. And I’m going to open up those freeze dry Wholesalers crinkle cut carrots that I had showed you a couple weeks ago. I’ll let you know what I think. This stew is hearty and delicious and will warm you through and through. I hope you love it. Thanks for joining me today. Well, hi there everyone. My name is Carth. I’m a wife, a mom, an author, and a cook. On this channel, I like to create recipes using freeze-dried food. Sometimes it’s completely shelf stable, like a meal or a mix in a jar. Other times, I combine freeze-dried with fresh, but all the time it’s delicious. I’m here to help people who have freeze-dried food on their shelves to know how to cook with it. I test out recipes so you don’t have to. Welcome to the Freeze Strike Foodie. [Music] I’ll go ahead and zoom in here so you can see some of these ingredients that go into this classic beef stew recipe of mine. This is a spin on my regular beef stew recipe that’s been up on my channel for years now. It’s an update, a little bit of an update, but it I mean it’s basically the same recipe. It’s classic flavors. There’s nothing too crazy in here. And if you don’t have these exact ingredients, I’ll talk you through what you might use instead. I’ll put a list of the ingredients you’ll need up on the screen just so you can get an idea of what I put in this. And then I’ll write the exact recipe in the description box below the video. I do that for all of my recipes. I’m just going to be feeding two people. So, I just needed two bowls of stew. And so, I’m putting this in a pint-sized jar. If you need more servings, just double the recipe and use a quart-siz jar. I’m going to be using the beef dices. Of course, most of my food is from Thrive Life. I sold that for so many years and I have a lot of the food thankfully, but uh you could use whatever brand of beef dices you like. I am including some mushrooms here because I love them in my beef stew. If you don’t like them, just leave them out. I like to put down some solid things and then follow that with some powdered things to fill in the gaps and spaces and so those powders don’t take up any extra room. It’ll settle down into the beef and the mushrooms there. So, that right there that you just saw me add is espanol sauce. And if you don’t have the espanol sauce from Thrive Life, you can make your own. I have a copycat recipe on my channel and I’ll link to that below. [Music] Now I’m going to add some potato dices. I love potatoes in my beef stew. Now I’m going to add some tomato sauce. And just like I have a copycat for that espanol sauce on my channel. I also have a copycat recipe for the tomato sauce. I’ll link to that below. I keep mine in the freezer and it is wonderful. It doesn’t clump up at all. So, I do recommend if you can put it in the freezer, do that. It keeps really well. Next, I’m going to add some mirror. Now, this is the mirror that I got from freeze-dried wholesalers. And it’s a mix of onions, celery, and carrots. And they’re all freeze-dried. If you don’t have that mix, you can use just a couple tablespoons of each of those ingredients. Freeze-dried onions, freeze-dried celery, and any kind of carrots. I have the freeze-dried, but you can also use the dehydrated. In order to amp up the beef flavor of this beef stew, I’m going to be adding some extra beef bullion. And let me show you the herbs I like to put in this recipe. The parsley that I’m going to add as well as the thyme is from Lighthouse. It’s the Lighthouse brand freeze dried herbs. So, if you don’t like thyme, don’t add thyme. You could do rosemary instead, or you could leave it out al together. I like to add a little bit of extra salt and pepper just to round out our flavors. Give everything a nice little pat. And I’m just trying to just show you here once I pat that down, there’s some extra room in the top of the jar. You can put whatever you want in the top of that jar. I am going to open these crinkle cut freeze-dried carrots that I had gotten from freeze-dried wholesalers. I showed these to you a couple weeks ago. Oh, yeah. And I forgot the bay leaf earlier, so I’m just going to slide that in there. I love carrots in my beef stew. So, I’m just going to open these up and show you what they look like. So, these freeze dried carrots, the ones that they have in their Mirua mix, I was really impressed with. I really like those. They’re little dices that are in the mirror. And I thought, yeah, I love carrots in my beef stew. I’m just gonna open up this little package here and fill in the top of my jar with freeze-dried carrots. They’re so crispy. You can just snap them. I really like the texture here. The bigger carrots, I do suggest you snap them in half because if not, then those slices are just a lot bigger than everything else. So, I did snap these in half. But if you don’t like carrots or if you don’t have these, you can fill up that jar with anything you want. You could do another vegetable like zucchini or green peas or green beans. Or you could just add more potatoes. You could add more diced beef just so your jar is full. Then the proportions are going to be perfect for this recipe. If you enjoy cooking with freeze-dried foods, please consider owning my cookbooks. They’re both available on Amazon in paperback and as a digital download on my website, the freeze-driedfpoody.com. I’ll link to both below. If you own freeze-dried food and want to be able to cook delicious meals with it, then you’ll love having my cookbooks. They’re loaded with completely shelf stable meals and mixes. And although I wrote the recipes with Thrive Life ingredients in mind, you can use any brand, including home freeze-dried foods. All right, back to the recipe. Whenever you’re ready to make this beef stew, all you need to do is get out a kind of medium large soup pot and empty the contents of the jar into the pot. And this is a just add water recipe. Super simple, very convenient. That’s one quart of water. Give it a good stir and then get some heat going on there. You want to bring this to a boil. Every once in a while you can give it a stir. Just make sure everything’s heating nicely and evenly. Now, here’s something optional for you, and I like to do this, is add just a little bit of some red wine. And like I said, this is totally optional. This you don’t have to do it. It’s good without it, but I do like the flavor that just a splash of red wine brings. I think I probably added about a/4 of a cup. So once it comes to a boil, you can reduce that heat down to probably a medium or uh something around a medium. I think I ended up at a 4 and 1/2 out of 10 on my stove. And you’ll just let this go. You’ll let this simmer for about 20 minutes. I think 20 minutes is the perfect amount of time. Now, the beef in there, it’s already cooked, right? We’re just rehydrating the beef, but the vegetables are raw. And so I think 20 minutes is a perfect amount of time to cook those vegetables through and just have the flavors meld. And you’ll notice the longer you cook it, the darker it will become and the thicker it will become. That espanol sauce has some thickener in it. So it turns it into a little bit of a gravy. Now is a great time to taste test. You can adjust your seasonings and just make sure everything’s nice and tender and fully cooked. And then you can serve it up. I like to add a little bit of fresh parsley to mine. And y’all, this stew is wonderful. I think the flavors that come through with using that espanol sauce as well as the tomato sauce, that is a great flavor combination. Now, if you don’t have the tomato sauce, you can just use straight tomato powder. That is fine as well. Now, let’s talk about the flavor of these carrots. Fantastic flavor. They’re slightly sweet, not overly sweet. They taste to me just like a fresh carrot that has been cooked. The texture of these is phenomenal. They are so spot-on for a fresh carrot. I am I’m blown away. I love it. In fact, everything I’ve had so far from freeze-dryles is fantastic. So, I’m going to highly recommend those. How we really like to serve this is with some crusty French bread or some a baguette or something like that. So, if you have some bread that you can toast up. Oh, it’s so good with this stew. We like to dip it in there. It’s just the perfect pairing for this stew. Just some nice crusty bread. M. So tasty. Well, that’s it, y’all. Wasn’t that easy? It’s simple. It’s a delicious meal and it’s ready in like 25 minutes. It’s a good one. This is a keeper. All right, guys. If y’all don’t mind, please be a friend and leave me a comment below. Hit the like button and if you haven’t already, please do subscribe. All right, I’ve got a verse for you for today. This comes from Lamentations 3:es 21-23. And it reads, “This I recall to my mind. Therefore, I have hope. The Lord’s loving kindnesses indeed never cease. For his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. I hope that encourages your hearts today. I hope you have a wonderful day and a blessed week. And until next time, y’all take care and keep thriving. [Music]