Mediterranean Seafood Stew

A delicious seafood stew similar in many ways to a Bouillabaisse or a Cioppino but made with easy to find ingredients. By leaving out the exotic ingredients and using a pre-cooked seafood blend it makes this a quick and easy delight while keeping the dish quite affordable at approximately $5 a serving.

1 1/2 lb Seafood Medley/Blend
1 Red Onion Diced
1 Red Bell Pepper Diced
3 Stalks Celery
3 Carrots
4 Cloves Garlic Minced
28oz San Marzano Tomatoes with Basil
3 Green Onions/Scallions (white and green separated)
1/2 Cup White Wine
4 cups of Chicken, Vegetable or Seafood Broth
1 Cup Cilantro, Italian Parsley or a mix of both
Juice of 1 lemon (Approx 4 tablespoons)
1/2 tsp Smoked Paprika
1 1/2 tsp Ground Coriander
1 tsp Cumin
1 tsp Chipotles, Calabrian Chilis or 1/2 tsp Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
1/2 tsp Oregano
Olive oil
Salt/Pepper

[Music] Hi, welcome to Meaty Bee’s Recipes. Today I will be preparing a Mediterranean seafood stew. To make this stew, you’ll need a pound and a half of frozen seafood blend, one onion, um, prefer red, one red bell pepper, three stocks of celery, four cloves of garlic, three carrots, a 28 can oounce can of San Monzaro tomatoes with basil. Uh, you’ll need three green onions or one leak. A leak is a little bit milder flavor, but green onions are around everywhere. Oh, you’ll need a half a cup of white wine, four cups of broth, one cup of cilantro, parsley or Italian parsley or a mixture of um for the topping at the end. You need the juice of one lemon, about four tablespoons. You’ll need a half a teaspoon of smoked paprika. 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of coriander, one teaspoon of cumin, and one teaspoon of chipotle, calabrian chilies, or a half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. I’m using the chipotles today because they provide uh a slightly smoky flavor and uh if you don’t like the smoky flavor, you could use um just the red chili flakes and the regular uh paprika, but I think it adds something to the uh flavor. Um, I’ll also be using a half a teaspoon of oregano, some high quality olive oil, and Mediterranean sea salt and black pepper to taste. Um, we want the veggies cut up into about/4 in pieces. And, um, we want to separate the white that half from the green half of the green onion. I got my ingredients ready. I’ll get the pot heating up. And uh two ingredients uh that are optional that I like to add. I like to add a couple bay leaves. I I feel it gives a nice aroma and goes well with the dish. And I also like to add a splash of uzo. Gives me a reason to have some. And uh you the nice flavor is a flavor of the Mediterranean. You don’t need to use it. A lot of people don’t care for the flavor. You could use just a little bit of ground anise. But I’ll be putting just a splash of uzo in mine. And uh my lemon gave out three tablespoons of juice. Just a little bit over three. So I’m gonna add uh decent amount of olive oil. I’ll get the red onion sautéing. And uh this should take about 5 minutes. and I’ll see you back in a little while. [Music] I like to uh season my food as I go. So, I’ll be adding a little bit of salt and pepper to the onions. And when I add the other vegetables, I’ll do the same. Just be careful not to overseason because you could always add, you can’t take out. [Music] Things have been going a couple minutes. Uh, so I’m going to add my lemon juice. Now, the citric acid and the steam that’s produced will help the onions caramelize quicker and I won’t have to sit here and and constantly stir them. So, I’ll just mix that in. Kind of even them out, put the lid on, and I’ll be back. So, it’s been a little while. I uh unpackaged my seafood medley. It I purchased it because it says it’s fully cooked. Um, and then I realized they didn’t de vain or desh shell the prawns or shrimp. Um, it is probably fully cooked but just barely. Uh, so we will be cooking this two to three minutes at the end anyway. But here we go. But the onions went for quite a while now. And uh yeah, they’re still looking fine. They didn’t burn. I was a little worried about them. Didn’t look okay. So, I’ll be adding the rest of the vegetables except for the garlic. Give them a little cook off. No, I’ll add the garlic now, too. [Music] And we’ll just let them cook for a few minutes. [Music] Again, we’ll salt and pepper as we go. And uh as soon as I could smell the garlic, um it’s ready. I’ll turn the heat up a little bit, too. Now, I had it on low before. [Music] We’ve used up um most of the oil, but I still think there’s enough in there to do what we need to do. Okay, I’m going to add the rest of my spices except for the bay leaves. Give it a stir. [Music] The uh garlic is nice and fragrant. I’m starting to smell the cumin. And uh we’ll give it a little splash of uzo. A little bit for the chef. [Music] Yeah, it’s smelling really good. We’ll add our two cups of wine. I’m using a uh Chardonnay. Oh, you should use a semi dry white wine for this um penog griel or Chardonnay or And you’re going to want to let the um alcohol cook off for a while. So, we’ll bring this back to a boil. Um, at this point we could also add the bay leaves. We’ll bring this up to a boil and I’ll be back. Okay, I’ve had the uh soup boiling now for about 5 minutes uncovered with the fan on to burn off all the alcohol vapors. um uncovered cups to assure that you don’t get an accidental um explosion. It’s highly unlikely, but it’s possible. So, oops. I’ll be taking the uh tomatoes and just kind of pen crushing them in. Um, this is a rustic style soup, so you uh put them into your desired uh size. They will break apart more as they cook, but these are pretty soft anyway. And they already have basil in them. They’re already seasoned with basil and uh that’s it. No um no salt, no garlic. Sometimes they they have garlic in them as well. So just read the can. [Music] And then I’ll just use some of the broth to rinse the can. So, at this point, um, because I do have a seafood allergy, I’m going to taste for the seasoning, and I’ll just slightly overseason. Um, in anticipation of this, yeah, it just needs a little more salt and pepper. I’ll bring that back up to a boil and see you in a few. It’s almost been 20 minutes. The carrots and celery are soft. It took the celery quite a while to get soft. Um, a little bit of bite to it still. So, I’m going to add the green onion tops and stir them in and cook just for an additional 3 minutes. Um, I don’t know if I mentioned it. In total, I added about 3 teaspoon of salt and one teaspoon of black pepper. It’s been 3 minutes. I’m going to add my seafood and the liquid that uh collected from it. I’m going to mix that in. And as soon as that starts to simmer again, I’m going to turn off the heat. [Music] So, it’s just starting to simmer. And I I just wanted you to uh see how nice it looked. It has clams, shrimp, muscles, squid, calamari in it. And um this cost me $25 give or take to make. The seafood medley itself was 16. Um $5 for the wine and then a little bit of produce. The broth I made from rotisserie chicken bones and skin. So that didn’t cost a thing. Um, this will serve six people. You know, at a restaurant, something like this, you’d be paying $18 a bowl. So, um, it’s simmering now. I’m going to turn off the heat. I’m going to stir in the majority of my one cup of, uh, herbs. I decided to go with just cilantro, but we’d like that a little bit better than parsley. And uh you just stir it in and it’s ready to serve. So I’ll make a quick accompanion accompany the mint quart. And I will be right back. To go along with my fish stew, I’ll be making some pan fried pita bread. So, I’m just heating up my pan on medium low heat. Add a little olive oil. I already have a parcooked pita bread that I’ve rubbed with olive oil and uh dusted with um oregano. And I rubbed a little bit of crushed garlic clove on top. Uh the other side doesn’t have any oil. That’s why we’re heating it up in the pan. We’ll let that oil get nice and warm. And uh just place in our pitha. Kind of give it a a mix. Make sure the whole bottom side gets covered. raise the heat back up up to medium. And we’re just going to toast that for a couple minutes on each. Okay, it’s been going for close to 3 minutes. So, we’ll give it a look. Yeah, that’s looking nice. Nice and crispy. So, we’ll give this side another two maybe 3 minutes. Okay, it’s been a couple minutes. I smell the bread. Nice and toasty. Give it a look. The mro snuck in just a tiny bit, but that should still taste really nice. Could have used a little more olive oil, I guess. But anyway, I’ll get uh everything plated up. To stir serve, you just ladle in some of this delicious stew. And uh other accompananyment other additions you can make uh instead of pizza bread would be garlic bread, garlic christini, some uh just for bread sticks. Um You could even just use some garlic croutons. And you just top it with a little reserved cilantro. Add in your little toast points. And it’s ready to enjoy. I hope you try this recipe and enjoy it. And thank you for watching my video. [Music]