Best Beef Stew Recipe | Slow Cooking during a natural DISASTER

It was a close call during this natural disaster, but the flavours of the beef stew in the slow cooker are incredible.

Best Beef & Bacon Slow Cooker Stew Recipe

500g diced beef (cheaper slow cooking beef)
1 diced onion
3 garlic cloves crushed
2 tbsp smoked paprika
3 large springs fresh rosemary
1 diced large carrot
3 medium diced potatoes
1/2 tsp fennel
1 cup water (250ml)
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Slow cook for 7-8 hours or until meat is falling apart.

Enjoy with mash, homemade bread or couscous.

Rosemary Focaccia bread recipe:

Here is the link to my sun-dried tomato focaccia, just swap the tomatoes for rosemary.

Happy homemade cooking,
Jamie

#beefstew #slowcooking #stew #crockpotrecipes #recipe

Good morning. It is super early here and I’ve already been out into the garden to pick this beautiful rosemary. This is going to be the star of the show for the best beef stew that you have ever had. This beef stew is a little bit different. Although it is so easy, it’s a 5 minute in the pan, throw it in the slow cooker kind of thing, it has got a depth of flavors that really really does just nourish the senses. We’ve got some bacon in there. Of course, we’ve got rosemary. And I’m also going to show you what I do with a few fennel seeds, which really does add such a vibrant, fresh flavor to our stew. So, don’t worry. You don’t have to spend too much time doing this. Just 5 or 6 minutes, then in the slow cooker, let it do all the work for about 8 hours, and we are going to eat such a nourishing meal. The world has gone a little bit crazy out there. When I went to pick this out of my garden this morning, we’re already just hitting gale force level of winds. Some of our country has gone into a state of emergency and we’re meant to get up to severe gale by lunchtime. So, I’m going to get the slow cooker on and then I’m going to head out into the garden. I’m going to secure some of my pots and my plants. I’m going to tie the spa cover down so that doesn’t go um and get rid of a few things that are sitting out there like outdoor furniture. So hopefully I can get all that done before the wind amps up. But it is so nice to know that this afternoon when I come in and I’ve done all my jobs that I have got a nourishing beef stew all ready for myself and my family. So let’s get started and I’ll show you how easy it is. Gosh, I’ve just quickly gone and put my washing machine on pause because our laundry and our kitchen are so close together and it was really going to town. You wouldn’t have been able to hear anything. So, I hope I remember to push start again on that. So, I’ve got my nice hot oil going here. I’ve got my spices and my flour and salt and pepper and fennel. And I’m just going to go ahead and give it a little mix. And then I’m going to put my beef in here and just coat it. Just going to pop that all in there and just my clean hand and coat it so it’s all covered in that. So, the flour is going to help thicken once we add the water. It’s going to make a lovely thick gravy. Now, to my hot oil, I’m going to add my onions that I’ve diced, my garlic, and my beef. And I’m going to just brown this. You want to get all of your flour in there. So, we want it nice and hot so that our finel seeds are hitting the oil and releasing all their aromatic aromomas. All their flavors are really going to come out. And same with the paprika. It’s going to be a different flavor than if we just put it in without cooking it first. And all of our rosemary can go in now as well. So, if you got fresh rosemary, just pull it back like that and all of the little leaves will come off. I’m not even going to chop them because I love love love rosemary like this. Has so much flavor. And you want the rosemary to hit the hot oil as well, cuz that’s going to release all those beautiful flavors. And you really only want to fry that for say 3 to 5 minutes. And while that’s doing that, I’m going to go ahead and chop up my carrot and my potatoes. I wouldn’t normally peel my potatoes, but I’m going to peel them today because I want the potatoes to just be falling apart. I don’t want them to be cubed. You don’t almost want them to be just beautiful little rounds of potato that just falls apart. [Music] And into the slow cooker, you can hear the Make sure that’s off. Um, you can hear all the fennel seeds popping. You know when fennel seeds are cooking because they make a little pop sound. So, we’ll pop all that into our slow cooker. And then also into here goes our chopped bacon. Again, rustically cut because, you know, it doesn’t matter what it looks like. I’m going to chop my potatoes into little diced pieces. So, that’s about the size that I’m cutting them into. So they’re nice and small and they’re going to cook quickly. Well, we’re going to cook over the eight hours that we’re going to slow cook this for. Okay, so my potatoes are in. I’m going to put my carrots in here that I’ve diced up as well. And then I’m going to add some water. And that is it. Give it a stir. And we’re not going to worry about this now for the next seven to eight hours. It’s just going to slow cook beautifully. It’s going to smell incredible. It already smells so good. I wish you could smell this. All those beautiful flavors, that rosemary, the bacon. We’ve got the smoked paprika, and of course the fennel seeds. Smells amazing. So, I will see you in 8 hours. So, it has not quite been 8 hours. It has been about 6 hours. But we are going to have a look at our slowcooked beef and bacon stew anyway because what’s happened as is the um power has gone out. The storm has really hit us quite badly. As I said earlier, some of our country is in a state of emergency. And much of it has lost power and we are one of them one of the ones that have lost power. So at first I thought the slow cooker had died completely but because it’s very old but um no our power is out but luckily I did get to make this beautiful rosemary to bread and I had brought that out of the oven just as we lost power. So ideal, we will somehow be able to reheat our slowcooked meal tonight and we will be able to have it with this beautiful bread. So the fosa bread is so easy to make. I will link it um in the description for you. I’ve simply drizzled this in some lovely oil. I’ve put lots of rosemary out the garden on this and of course covered it in some lovely pink salt. And that is going to be delicious with our beef. So, let’s have a look and see how it’s turned out. Okay, let me move it over here so that you can see it. It does smell so so incredible. Let’s grab a knife and see what we’re looking like. Gosh, this looks absolutely delicious. So, you can see that it’s made a lovely gravy that all of the potatoes are just falling apart, and that’s what we want. And your beef you should not have to cut. You should simply be able to sort of push the fork into it and it will just fall apart. Okay, let’s have a try and see what our beef is like. It is just falling apart. It looks so good. My windswept family are going to be home very soon. We’re going to have an early tea so that they can enjoy this while it’s still hot. That is just divine. I can’t wait for you to try this. It was so easy to put together and it’s got that lovely fresh garden taste of the rosemary, the lovely finel, the smoky bacon, the lovely like rustic carrots, and all the potatoes falling apart and the meat is so tender. But then you’ve got this lovely thick gravy in here as well, which is just going to be so nice to mop up with our bread. So you can have this with a mashed potato, a couscous, anything you like. But I really like to have this sort of rustic meal with some lovely bread. And tonight’s going to be our rosemary for kosher. So I hope you enjoyed that. I’m going to go and see if there’s any damage around the property. And fingers crossed we get our power on soon.