Comforting and Delicious Dutch Oven Beef Stew

Today I’m sharing this delicious and comforting beef stew recipe. It’s the perfect hearty meal during the colder months and truly warms you from the inside out. This recipe doesn’t require red wine for the sauce; instead, it uses simple pantry ingredients to develop deep flavor. The stew is braised in a Dutch oven until the beef is so tender it melts in your mouth. This is such a comforting winter recipe, and one I repeat throughout the cold season. Serve it alongside some crusty bread for a complete meal 🙂

RECIPE: https://asimplepalate.com/blog/dutch-oven-beef-stew/

INGREDIENTS
2-3 Tablespoons cooking olive oil
1 3/4 to 2 pounds lbs chuck beef, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 large yellow onion, cut into 1-inch chunks
4 carrots, stem removed and cut into 1-inch chunks
4 celery stalks, cut into chunks
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
4 medium-sized red or yellow potatoes, cut into quarters
5 cups beef broth
2 teaspoons fresh thyme, finely minced
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, finely minced
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
salt & pepper
2 Tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped

Where I source my beef from: https://www.lilponderosabeef.com/
How to find a quality beef farmer local to you: https://www.eatwild.com/products/index.html

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Classic Beef Chili: https://youtu.be/kspIvqBz_cE
Rosemary Garlic Bread: https://youtu.be/Wic7iicvyt4
Homemade Sourdough Bread: https://youtu.be/m1VmgwZE4Ks

EQUIPMENT USED IN THIS VIDEO
Dutch Oven – https://amzn.to/4rEvUTM
Chef Knife – https://amzn.to/4rEvUTM
Cutting Board (similar) – https://amzn.to/49TSaTj

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Hey everyone, welcome to my kitchen. I’m Bethany and today’s recipe I’m going to be showing you how to make a comforting and flavorful beef stew. This is perfect for when the weather is super cold out like it is right now. It is so comforting and we’re using really simple ingredients, so it’s very easy to prepare. So, let’s get right into it. Okay, so the first thing that we want to do is get our beef ready for the beef stew. So, I have just under two lbs of stew meat here. And this is chuck roast cut into small pieces. And I’m just going to pat this dry cuz typically there’s extra moisture, extra juices. I already patted most of that off with paper towels, but we don’t want these wet because we want them to brown in the pan. So, just getting that extra moisture off. So, big thing with making beef stew, you want these to be a nice size. So, thankfully, my beef farmer has cut these into nice 1-in pieces. You don’t want them super big because we really want these to become tender while cooking in the oven. And if they’re bigger, they’re most likely going to be a little tough. So, what we’re going to do is put our meat in a bowl. Just find it easier to do it that way. And sprinkle a generous amount of kosher salt to season this. and pepper. Always want to shout out my beef farmer, Bob from Little Ponderosa Bee Farms. I love being able to get really good quality beef. This is not sponsored in any way, but I’m just a big supporter of finding a local beef farmer, especially cuz the prices in the grocery store for beef are insane, and you just overall will get such a better deal on the price of your beef, but also exceptional quality. This is 100% grass-fed and I know where it came from. Now, we’re going to coat this with 1 tbsp of flour. This is also going to help the beef get a nice browning on it. And then the flour will actually release into our stew and help thicken it a little bit. All right, so after we’ve tossed the meat in the flour, I have a big Dutch oven pot here heated up over medium heat. I’m going to put about 2 to three tablespoons of olive oil in this. A nice cooking olive oil. I always use graza, the sizzle one. And now in batches, we’re going to brown our stew meat. But we don’t want to overcrowd the pan. If you overcrowd the pan, then you’ll have the meat steam. And the whole point of browning it is so that we get more flavor in the stew from the meat. So the better the browning, the better the flavor that we’ll have in the stew. So we’ll just brown these about 2 minutes on each side. All right. So, we’re flipping these after about 2 minutes, and they have a really nice crust on them. And my best tip if you don’t want your meat to stick in the pan, because I’ve had that happen before, is you want to heat your pot up first and then add your oil. That’s your best bet for making sure that the meat doesn’t stick. But if it does, it’s not a problem. You can always splash some stock in there and get it off of the surface of the pan. It’ll be nice flavor for later. All right. So, after our first batch of beef is done, I’m going to take it and transfer it just to a bowl, we’ll set this aside for later because we have to do another batch of our beef. And you could always set up two pots or pans and brown them. But the reason that I do it this way is because I really want all that beef flavor from the browning to be in the beef stew. So, that’s what you’re going to be missing if you don’t brown it all in one pan. All right. So, now we’ll transfer the rest of our beef back in here. And I’m going to refresh a little bit of this pan with some oil. I absolutely love beef stew. I feel like it’s so nostalgic and it’s such a childhood recipe from cold winters that my mom would make, but I’ve grown to really love it and it’s just so comforting. It’s like chili. It’s just one of those meals that you want to have when it’s freezing cold out. It’s great to make a big batch of this, freeze it, have leftovers for later. So, after our last batch of meat is browned, we’ll set this aside in the bowl and get our vegetables prepped. All right, so I’ve turned my pot off the heat, but what I want to do before it continues to cook and potentially burn the things on the bottom, I’m going to splash the bottom of the pot with a little bit of beefto that we’re going to use later. And my pot is already cooling now. Um, but that way that’s not going to burn and we’ll use all that for flavor. Plus, that broth is all going to absorb with our vegetables. So, we first want to cut up one large onion. I generally like to cut all my vegetables really small, especially for soups and sauces. But in this case, for a beef stew, we want some rustic cuts. So, I’m going to dice the onion and just rough cuts some bigger chunks. That’s the nice thing about beef stew. The prep doesn’t take long cuz you just roughly cut the vegetables. So, I’m going to turn the heat back on in my pot and add my diced onions. That’ll take a minute to heat back up, but that’s fine. So, then the recipe calls for four celery stocks, but my celery stocks are so small, so I’m actually going to use five. And these are going to be just 1/2 in slices, rough cuts again. Add those in. My eyes are already tearing from the onion. And then we have four carrots. I’m using four medium to large carrots. We’re just going to cut these into 1/2 in slices. If you notice, I never peel my carrots. I just find that so much of the flavor is in the skin and in the peel. And uh so that’s where a lot of the nutrients are. So I never peel them. You can totally peel your carrots, but I think it’s more flavor. All right, so now we’ll sprinkle a generous amount of salt on there. Then we’ll mix that in. And all those brown bits on the bottom from the brown meat are going to come off and just mix in with those vegetables. It’s really going to flavor the stew nicely. I’m going to sprinkle a little bit more salt in there. And we’ll let these cook for just a few minutes. We want them to soften. And then while we cook those, we’ll prep our garlic cloves. We’re going to use six garlic cloves. Okay, so our vegetables are looking great. They’ve been cooking for about 4 minutes. So now we’re going to add our minced garlic. We’ll mix that in. Cook it for 30 to 60 seconds. It already smells so good just with that flavoring on the bottom of the pan, vegetables. So good. Okay, so now for a little bit more richness and flavor, we’re going to do 2 tablespoon of tomato paste. This also adds as a thickener, but it’s just really great for developing flavor, especially in this step. We’re going to cook it for about 2 minutes. And cooking it with the vegetables and being able to sear it on the pan, it will just deepen the flavor of the broth in the beef stew. Everybody kind of cooks their beef stew a little bit different. Some add tomatoes, some add tomato paste. I didn’t always do tomato paste, but I just thought why not? Because it’s really going to add even more flavor, and it does. But I don’t do whole tomatoes in this. I like it to be a nice smooth broth. All right. All right. So, while the tomato paste is cooking, I’m going to prep my potatoes. So, I have uh four medium sized potatoes. I’m using a mix of red and yellow potatoes, and I’m just going to cut those into quarters. Not peeling them. If they’re a little bit bigger, you can just cut them into thirds as well. But the potatoes are great. They make this so hearty, and they’re actually going to release a lot of starch into the stew and help naturally thicken it as well. All right. So, this is ready to go. So, now we’re going to add five cups of beefto. Then we’ll add our potatoes and then our meat back to the pot. That looks so good. But we have to flavor this more. So, generally, a lot of people like to use red wine uh in a beef stew, and I’m all for that. But when I made this recipe years ago, I wasn’t really cooking with alcohol. I was actually trying to avoid using it while still having amazing flavor. So, if you don’t use alcohol, this is a great recipe for you. But we’re going to do one tablespoon of wistachire sauce. And this is going to add serious depth of flavor to our beef stew. So, you really don’t have to use the wine, but you could replace one cup of the beeftock and add wine as well, make it even more flavorful. Then, we’re going to do 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder and 1/4 teaspoon of onion powder just to layer in a little bit more flavor. It’s nice to have a concentrated flavor of the onion and garlic, too, but just a little bit. Then, we’re going to do two teaspoons of fresh thyme. And I’m just going to peel this right off of the stem. Then after the time, we’ll add two teaspoons of fresh rosemary. Both of these just add so much flavor to the whole beef stew. You need fresh herbs in a stew. So, we’ll toss everything together. Then, of course, we’re going to season with a generous pinch of salt and black pepper. So, now I’m going to bring my heat up just a little bit. We’ll bring this to a simmer and then we’re actually going to braze it in the oven. All right. So, now that our pot is hot, we’re going to cover this with our lid. And now we’re going to braze this in the oven at 375° for an hour and a half. And in between that time, kind of halfway through, I like to just check on it, see how the stock is doing. It’s going to absorb a good bit down, but I like to have extra beef stock on hand so that I can add a little bit extra in cuz it always absorbs a good bit. So, we’ll braze this for an hour and a half and then we can enjoy it. Okay, so the beef stew is out of the oven. The whole house smells amazing. We’ll take the lid off. Looks so good. and good bit of the stock has absorbed up, but I always like to have extra beef stock on hand to just add it in case I need to stretch the meal a little bit or if I feel like too much has absorbed. But you always want to make sure that you salt more if you add more stock. So, before we serve this, we’re going to chop up about 2 to 3 tablespoon of fresh parsley. This is actually from my garden. It is hanging on in the freezing cold outside, but it’s nice to still be able to use some things from the garden. Okay, so now we’ll add the parsley to our stew. It’s nice to finish the stew with just a little bit of fresh herbs. We’ll stir that together. This smells so good. It looks so good. The consistency looks great. So before we do an official tasting, I just want to taste the broth to make sure that it’s well seasoned. You always want to taste something before you serve it and then salt it if it needs it. Amazing. I actually surprisingly don’t need any salt. So I’m now going to serve myself a bowl of this. It looks so so good. That is so good. That meat is so tender. Oh my goodness. And it has not always been tender when I’ve made this recipe. That’s why I emphasize cutting the meat smaller than you think. It is so flavorful, so hearty, so comforting. And actually, one of my favorite ingredients is the potatoes. I just love a potato in a stew. It’s just I don’t know. I love the texture of them. This is phenomenal. Has so much flavor. I served this for my family a few nights ago and they all loved it. I don’t think my parents had had it before and they were raving about how flavorful the broth was and just the whole dish. They loved it and they were asking for servings of it after we filmed. So, I’ll be sharing this with them. So, I made this for my family, but I also made this the other night when I had ice skating. So, I’ve mentioned in other videos that I’m a figure skater and there’s one day of the week that I coach and so I’m on the ice for a number of hours and I get so cold. I seriously come home and I am literally chilled to the bone. I cannot get warm. And I served this that night. I had it already prepared and I came home and it was just like a warm hug. It was everything that I needed cuz I was seriously so cold. So, it’s just perfect if you’re literally chilled to the bone like I was. Well, I hope you guys enjoy this one. It is definitely a recipe to repeat through the colder winter months. And if you like this recipe, you might also enjoy our chili. That’s one of my other staples for the winter time. And if you try this, you can leave me a review on the website. I always appreciate those. Or you can leave a comment down below. And as always, I so appreciate you guys subscribing and commenting every week, liking the videos. However you’re supporting the channel, just watching the videos, I’m so so grateful. And uh as always, I’ll catch you in the next recipe. And I’ll see you in the comments.