3 Iconic Stews Every Home Cook Should Master

Learn to make the 3 iconic stews that I think every home cook should know. Get a free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at https://www.drinkLMNT.com/brianlagerstrom

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HUNGARIAN GOULASH
▪ 3 lb (1.5 kg) chuck roast, 1–2 in cubes
▪ salt & pepper
▪ 40 g (3 Tbsp) olive oil
▪ 600 g (4 lg) yellow onion, small dice
▪ 20 g (6 cloves) garlic, minced
▪ 30 g (2 Tbsp) tomato paste
▪ 50 g (¼ c) sweet paprika
▪ 2 packs (14 g) gelatin
▪ 1000 g (4 c) stock (chicken or beef)
▪ 3 bay leaves
▪ 5 g (1 heaping tsp) BTB beef base
▪ 150 g (2) red bell peppers, lg dice
▪ 300 g (3 med) carrots, chunky dice
▪ 450 g (3 med) potatoes, 1 in dice
▪ sour cream & chives (for garnish)

1 Toss beef w/ oil, salt & pepper; broil 15 min ’til browned.
2 Sweat onions in oil 15 min; add garlic 1 min.
3 Add tomato paste 1 min; off heat add paprika 30 sec.
4 Mix gelatin in stock; add to pot w/ BTB & bay; add beef + tray juices; bake 300 °F/150 °C 90 min.
5 Add carrots, peppers, potatoes; bake 45–60 min ’til tender.
6 taste and season with salt. Cool 30 min, chill overnight, skim fat, reheat & season. Serve w/ sour cream & chives.

IRISH BEEF & STOUT STEW
▪ 3½ lb (1½ kg) beef chuck, 1–2 in cubes
▪ 15 g (1 Tbsp) salt ▪ 40 g (3 Tbsp) olive oil
▪ 175 g (10 oz) cremini mushrooms, quartered
▪ 250 g (3 med) carrots, lg dice
▪ 300 g (1 lb ≈ 3 med) gold potatoes, halved
▪ 120 g (1½ c) pearl onions, peeled
▪ 75 g (5 Tbsp) unsalted butter
▪ 75 g (½ c) AP flour
▪ 600 g (2½ c) stout beer (Guinness)
▪ 750 g (3 c) beef stock
▪ 3 packs (21 g) gelatin
▪ 20 g (1 Tbsp) BTB beef base
▪ 20 g (1 Tbsp + 1 tsp) tomato paste
▪ 20 g (1 Tbsp + 2 tsp) Worcestershire sauce
▪ 2–3 bay leaves ▪ 2–3 sprigs thyme
▪ 90 g (1 heaping c) frozen peas ▪ black pepper

Broil beef ≈ 15 min ’til browned.
Sauté mushrooms, carrots & onions 5 min; set aside.
Melt butter, whisk in flour ’til smooth.
Whisk stock + beer + gelatin; add to pot w/ BTB, tomato paste, Worc. Bring to simmer.
Add beef + tray juices; add bay & thyme; cover & bake 300 °F 90 min.
Stir in veg; bake 45–60 min more, stir halfway.
Season to taste w salt(!!) & add peas. Cool 30 min then chill 2 h or overnight; skim fat, reheat. Serve w/ bread.

BEEF BOURGUIGNON
▪ 3½ lb (1½ kg) beef chuck, lg chunks
▪ salt ▪ 30 g (2 Tbsp) olive oil
▪ 750 ml (3 c) dry red wine
▪ 300 g (2 med) onions, rough chop
▪ 300 g (2) carrots, rough chop
▪ 150 g (2 stalks) celery, rough chop
▪ 1 head garlic, halved
▪ 4–5 sprigs thyme ▪ 2 bay leaves
▪ 900 g (3¾ c) beef stock ▪ 4 packs gelatin
▪ 15 g (1 Tbsp) tomato paste ▪ 20 g (1 Tbsp) BTB beef base
▪ 25 g (2 Tbsp) olive oil (for mushrooms)
▪ 275 g (10 oz) cremini mushrooms, quartered
▪ 300 g (2 med) carrots, sliced (for finish)
▪ mashed potatoes for serving

Broil beef 15 min ’til browned.
In Dutch oven add wine + onion, carrot, celery, garlic, thyme, bay; boil then simmer 15 min ’til reduced ¾.
Stir gelatin into stock; add to pot w/ tomato paste, BTB, beef + fond. Tuck cheesecloth around beef.
Bake 300 °F 2½–3 h ’til tender. Cool & chill overnight.
Next day skim fat, strain liquid, reduce 30–45 min ’til glossy.
Sauté mushrooms 7–8 min in oil + salt. Add fresh carrots to sauce 15 min, then mushrooms & beef; reduce 10 min more ’til glazey.
Serve beef + sauce over mashed potatoes.

Hey, what’s up? In this video, I’m going to show you guys my well- tested recipes for the three most iconic stews of all time. The last of which, in my opinion, is the true king of all stews. And I’ve been working on my version of it for over 15 years. To get started, I’m grabbing about 3 to 3 1/2 lbs of boneless chuck roast. Chuck roast is the ideal brazing cut because it has plenty of intramuscular fat. It’s usually boneless, so it’s easy to cut into smaller pieces. and it’s relatively affordable compared to cuts like brisket or short ribs. Now, to prep this, I’m going to cut it into 1 in cubes. There’s a big piece of fat right here, so I’m going to do my best to trim that out. But some fat is okay. That’s going to make the stew pretty rich. If you get too nitpicky about removing all the fat, you’re going to edit your pieces down into small chunks that are pretty hard to turn into something usable. Once I’ve got the majority of the hard fat cut out, I’m just going to cut these chunks into 1-in pieces. You kind of want to go where the natural seams are, too. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with pieces that fall apart when you pull them out of the stew. Whenever I make a dish like this, I tend to start with maybe a half pound or even a pound more chuck roast than I think I need because in the process of cutting it into nice pretty cubes, you’re going to come across some sineuy stuff or more hard fat. And you can pretty easily end up with not enough meat. So, it’s good to overshoot a little bit. And once I’ve got all my beef cut into oneinch pieces, I should have about 1,200 grams or about 2 and a2 pounds. From here, I’m going to move this beef over into a little bowl so I can get it set up to brown it off. Brazing is a two-step process where the first part is about searing or getting a mayard reaction on the outside of the meat and then the second part is moist heat. To sort out that first part where we’re going to be doing the browning, I’m going to hit this beef with a significant amount of olive oil, maybe like 3 tablespoons. Then I’m going to hit it with two strong three-finger pinches of salt. And then I’ll just jump in and toss to get everything coated here. This process of browning is going to be a little bit different from what you might see in a lot of traditional stew recipes where they’re browning the beef on the stove top. Instead, I like to get the beef spread out onto a sheet tray and broil it in the oven. I do this for a couple of reasons. The first is it’s less messy than browning beef on the stove top. And the other reason is that it’s faster. I can broil this beef while I’m doing some other prep. And if you’re browning stuff over at the stove, you have to kind of be babysitting it the entire time, and that sucks up a lot of attention, and you can’t really be doing something else. Now, I’m going to move it over to the oven and slide it under my broiler about 8 in away, give or take. That’s going to take about 15 minutes or so, but I’m going to check on it every five because broilers can get a little bit rowdy. And in the meantime, I’m going to cut up some onions. I’m just cutting four or five times pole to pole, turning it 90 degrees, and then giving it a little rough chop perpendicular. When I get to the end, I’ll just push it over. And a bit more rough chopping. For now, I need to check back on the beef under the broiler. And at this point, it’s got a good amount of browning, but it’s still in that phase where it’s trying to sizzle off a little bit of its water. So, I’m just going to rotate this 180° and throw it back under the broiler for another 5 to 7 minutes. One last little bit of prep I want to clean up while the beef is finishing broiling is just to smush five or six cloves of garlic. By the way, this is the prototype of the garlic press that I’m working on. It’s made 100% out of stainless steel and it is extremely heavy duty. We want about 15 to 20 g of garlic in total. Now, I’m going to check back on the beef. After about 15 minutes under the ripper, this beef is looking really, really nice. As you can see, we’ve got really beautiful crusty browning. We’ve got all this rendered beef fat and we’ve got plenty of fond. This is all the beef drip that roasted onto the tray and it’s going to taste super good. From here, I’m going to set this beef off to the side and I’m actually going to start cooking the dish. So, I’ve got a medium high heat Dutch oven here and I’m going to add in copious amounts of oil because we’re going to be cooking these onions for a long time and they need plenty of fat. So, I’m just going to slide in all 750 g and give them a very generous pinch of salt, maybe like four fingers. And then I’m just going to stir these to get everything nice and coated. So yeah, let’s address the volume of onions in this pot. It’s significant. This is probably double what I would put into a normal stew. But goulash is actually thickened with onions. Instead of using rue and starch to thicken up the liquid, the onions get slowcooked and they disintegrate, which ends up giving the liquid in the stew this really beautiful silky viscosity. But importantly, you have to cook the onions long enough. If you don’t cook them until they’re super melty up front in this phase, that fiber in the onions is going to carry through and it’s not going to end up thickening the stew. So, we want to give this a good long while. A quick note is that if you’re catching a little bit too much browning on the pot here before the onions are fully softened, do not hesitate to delaze that with a little bit of water and stir that in. We don’t really want to caramelize here because that’s going to bring really dark flavors that are just going to end up making the final goulash a little bit too heavy and a little bit too dark. And after about 15 minutes of slowly cooking these onions, they’re nice and melty. They’re not fibrous anymore and they have just like a tiny bit of color, but they’re definitely not caramelized. From here, I’m going to put in my 15 to 20 g of garlic and just sweat that for about a minute or two to soften it up and to take off the raw edge. That’s smelling so good. Oh my god. Oh, baby. Garlic’s soft, so I’m gonna throw in 30 grams of tomato paste. And just stir that in. Pan’s getting a little bit hot, so I’m going to crank it down. Again, I don’t want hard caramelization here. After a minute of frying the tomato paste, I’m going to kill the heat real quick and add in 50 g of paprika. I killed the heat because paprika can get bitter really really fast and I do not want that to happen. The paprika is the entire point of this dish basically. So blooming it out over a really gentle heat is what I like to do. Next in is 1,000 g of chicken stock. Water is also fine. By the way, I added two packets of powdered gelatin to the stock and whisk that in. The gelatin helps simulate long cooked highquality restaurant stock and it brings a little bit of added body and viscosity. It’s going to help this brazing liquid grab onto the meat. Right away, you can see that that 50 g of paprika has significantly increased the viscosity of this stew, which is really beautiful. And it smells so amazing. It’s fruity and it’s got this very savory smell. It almost smells like Lowry seasoning salt, which I think is like half paprika. Once that’s stirred in and up to a spirited simmer, I’m going to add in about 5 to 10 grams of better than bouan beef base just to up the beef a bit. And then I’m going to add in 3ish bay leaves and stir all that in. If you don’t have access to high quality bouan, you can leave it out. This stew is going to be plenty beefy without it. Speaking of beef, at this point I’m going to slide in all of my broiled beef chunks along with all that fondi stuff that got stuck to the pan. There’s so much nice beef juice in here. Make sure to get all of that in. All right, now that I’ve got this up to a lazy simmer, I’m going to pop on a lid, open up my oven, which I’ve got preheated to 300F. Then I’m going to move this pot over and braze it gently and slowly for about 90 minutes. And after about 90 minutes on the braise, I’m going to pull this out. Oo man, look at all those onions on there, dude. And the beef is I would say it’s just past halfway. It’s definitely not shreddable yet. Still got a little bit of bounce to it, but that’s exactly where you want it. If at this point your beef is shreddable, that means that you probably cooked it too long, you cooked it too hot, or you cut the beef way too small. We still need time left over within the braze to cook the vegetables. Speaking of that, I’m going to add in 450 g of chunky Yukon Gold potatoes. I go for at least 1 in. anything smaller than that and it kind of just melts into the background and you’re not getting that nice chunky stew experience. Same size for the carrots and I’m adding in 300 g of those. And then I’ve got some diced bell peppers here, about 250 g. And I’m adding them at this point instead of earlier when we were cooking the onions because when I was testing the recipe, sweating them with the onions brought lots of additional sweetness. But after all this long cooking and brazing, the pepper flavor was really muted and they were totally blown out texturally. Adding them at this point ensures that we get a little bit of that fresh, juicy pepper flavor and it kind of echoes what’s going on with the paprika and it brings textural interest. It’s just one more thing you get to enjoy when eating the final dish. All right, lid goes back on. Then I’m going to throw the Dutch oven back into the oven again at 300F. And I’ll cook those veggies along with the beef for about 45 more minutes, but I’ll check back halfway to give everything a stir. It’s been about 25 minutes, so I’m going to pull the braze out real quick and just give it a stir. This is going to ensure that everything’s getting cooked evenly. Stuff can settle on the bottom and get a little bit more cooked than the stuff sitting on top. All right, so the lid is going to go back on. Then this thing’s going to go back into the oven and I’ll check it in another 25 to 30 and we should be done at that point. Guys, how we doing? My towel. I got it. And after two and a half hours in total, I’m going to check to see how everything’s looking. Oh man. First things first, I’m just going to smush a potato to see if that’s cooked through. And it’s still holding itself together, but I can cut through it. And then for carrots, I’ll just grab one and give it a bite. Oh my god, why did I do that? It’s so hot. Oh god. And then as far as the beef goes, I think it’s nice to pull a piece out and give it the old shred test. It’s kind of hard to do it in the liquid because the beef tends to fall to the bottom of the pot. For me, perfect braised meat should be pulled apart, but it should still hold itself together. You don’t want something that just completely falls apart because that’s going to be ropey and dry, and that’s a signal that you’ve overcooked it and all of the collagen has leaked into the sauce and all of the moisture has been squeezed out. From here, I’m going to let this cool for about 30 minutes. Then, I’m going to move it over to the fridge so that the braze can set up overnight. This is really crucial because that allows the meat to cool down inside of the liquid. And during that process, it sucks some of that liquid back up, making the meat juicier, more tender, and overall more delicious. Also, a lot of flavor compounds come together and synthesize overnight as the beef stew cools down, which doesn’t happen if you eat it hot right away. It’s going to increase in quality by at least 50%. So, I definitely wouldn’t skip this step. The next day, before I serve this, I’m going to pull some of the fat off the top of the stew. Since it’s set up, it’s much easier to pull off now. And I’m taking about 75% of it. Now, I’m just going to bring that up to a simmer and give the brazing liquid one final taste for salt. And that’s really close, but I think it needs one more strong pinch. To serve, I’m going to make sure to fish out the perfect mix of potatoes, beef, carrots, and peppers along with that oniony sauce. Then to bring some creaminess and fattiness, I’ll drop on a little dollop of sour cream and a big pinch of fresh chives to kind of reinforce that onion flavor. M man, the paprika is so bright and sensual. And the beef, you guys, it’s so unuous and it shreds as you bite into it. Goulash is just insanely underrated, you guys. I really hope you try this recipe. Up next is a classic Irish beer stew. But first, I want to talk about this pineapple flavored sparkling electrolyte water from Element, the sponsor of this video. Aside from these delicious cans that taste like something you’d drink on vacation, Element also makes a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix that has the optimal balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, and it doesn’t have any dodgy or artificial ingredients. I drink an Element pretty much every day, and I never travel without it. Case in point, on my recent trip to Hong Kong, I ignored all of my food safety spidey sense and went ahead and ate some very questionable room temperature meat. Let’s just say I lost a lot of fluids. And while Element couldn’t put the cork back in the bottle, it did keep me from getting completely dehydrated, and I really think it helped me bounce back quickly and enjoy the rest of my trip. Right now, you can get a free 8count sample pack of the most popular element flavors with any purchase at drinkelement tea.com/ Brian Laggerstrom. Element is the ideal choice to keep you hydrated if you’re active and sweat a lot or if you cook all your meals at home with only whole foods ingredients. Most people get their salt from processed foods. If that’s not you, you might need to drink some elements. Check out the pineapple sparkle waters or the watermelon salt. Those are my favorites. To get started, just like for the first stew, I’ve got about 3 to 3 and 12 lbs of beef chuck roast. And to prep it up for the stew, I’m just going to lose the excessive hard white fat where I can. That can make for a flabby stew and make the overall sauce just feel a little bit too greasy. And once I’ve got the fat cleaned up, I’ll just come back and same as for the goulash, cut these into roughly one to one and 1/2 in size stew pieces. And once I’ve got about two and a half to three pounds of chuck cut into oneinch cubes, I’m going to throw it into a bowl. Hit it with a signif amount of oil. And then a nice four-finger pinch of salt. We’ll give this a quick toss. Toss to get everything coated. I’ll slide it out onto a sheet tray real quick. Then the whole thing goes under my broiler to get a oven sear. And that’s going to take about 15 minutes. I’ve got a little bit of downtime while that beef broils. So this is usually the time in a braze where I get all my knife work done. So, for that, I’m going to grab some cremeni mushrooms and just cut them into chunky quarters. Next, I’ll just chop some carrots into big dumb pieces. For me, stew is all about having really tender carrots that are just saturated with beef juice. And so, you want just idiotically large rounds like this. In total, I want about 250 g. Next, I’m going to take three mediumsized Yukon Gold potatoes and chunk those down as well. For the same reason, I want something that’s going to absorb a bunch of juice and be big enough to hold on to its texture and give me an interesting bite. In total, I want about 300 grams. The last bit of prep here is to take some pearl onions and break those down and clean them up. These are a huge pain in the butt to peel. I’m not going to lie, but the easy way to do it is to kind of cut off both poles, make a little slit along the side, and then just peel the outside like a jacket. In total, we need about 120 g, which is probably about 40 pearl onions. If you can’t find fresh pearl onions at your local grocery store, or if you’re not the type of person that’s going to stand here crank it on freshies for 15 minutes, you certainly can use frozen pearl onions. Just know that they’re not going to have any nice onion texture in the final dish, and they’re going to be pretty soft. And once I got all the vegetables cut up for the stew, I’m going to check on the beef. Ooh, baby. After 15 minutes under the broiler, this stuff looks sick. We’ve got nicely browned beef. We’ve got rendered beef fat and some nice fondi stuff to make the sauce taste more delicious. From here, I’m going to set the beef off to the side for a second and start building the stew. For that, I’m going to drop my Dutch oven over a medium high heat. Start with some oil, maybe 3 tablespoons. Then, I’ll add in my mushrooms, my pearl onions, and my carrots. I’ll hit them with a small pinch of salt. Then I’ll jump in and give them a quick sauté for about 3 to 5 minutes to par cook them. Par cooking this stuff, I think, is a pro move because it gives these vegetables a cooked in oil flavor that’s a lot more delicious and dynamic than if we had just tossed them raw directly into the stew. And it also simmers off a little bit of the moisture on the inside, which concentrates the flavor and makes the carrots taste more carroty. The mushrooms more oniony. No, the mushrooms more mushroomy and the onions are going to taste like onions. After five minutes, these have taken on a little bit of color and they’ve lost a little bit of their moisture. So, I’m going to call them good. From here, I’m going to do it with two towels, bro. What are you doing? I’m a professional. I Anyways, you just want to safely move these hot ass veggies over to a bowl. Then, pot goes back on heat. Then I’ll drop in 75 gram of butter and give that a quick melts ski. Okay, once the butter’s melted, 75 gram of flour go in. Then I’ll whisk that right away to get a little rue going. Keep this moving constantly cuz the rue can get pretty grippy and start to get toasty. And the browner you get a rue, the less thickening power it has. At this point, my r is smelling toasty. And we’ve cooked off the raw edge of the flour and it’s not lumpy at all. So, next I’ll add in 750 gram of store-bought beeftock that I’ve combined with 600 g of Guinness or any mild Irish stout and three packets of powdered gelatin. And again, the gelatin’s getting whisked in here before the liquids are hot. That’s an important detail. Now, I’m going to bring this up to a spirited simmer for about a minute or so to cook off the raw edge of that rue and to thicken things up a little bit. Then, I’ll add in 20 g of Better Than Buon beef base, 20 g of wir, and 20 g of tomato paste. Then, I’m just going to whisk all that in. and let things bubble for another minute or so to let those flavors get integrated and to let the tomato paste fully dissolve. At this point, I’m going to grab the broiled beef and slide it all into the pot with the boiling Guinness and everything else. And make sure to get all the fondi bits, all the beef drip, all the fat. Get that into the pan. That’s flavorful. If yours is uh stuck to the sheet tray, to loosen this up, throw it on your stove with about a half a cup of water and scrape it up with a wooden spoon. That heat will loosen it up instantly. Okay, beef in. I’ll give that a stir and then I’ll bring it back up to a low simmer real quick. Then the last touch is to add in a little sache of thyme and a couple of bay leaves. This is optional, by the way. It’s kind of an extra little bit of fanciness. I go back and forth. Sometimes I make a sache, sometimes I throw the herbs right in. I don’t love throwing the herbs in though because they tend to disintegrate and then you get little slimy bits of bay leaf mixed into your stew and thyme stems stuck to stuff. So, it’s just like a little bit of extra finesse. Okay, everything’s tucked in. Things are looking good. The beef’s up to a low bubble. So, I’m going to turn off the heat, throw on a lid, and then I’m going to throw this into a 300F oven to braise for 90 minutes. 90 minutes later, I’ll pull the braise out of the oven. Oo, baby, that’s beef stew. At this point, the beef is getting more tender, but it’s definitely not all the way there. It needs at least another 45 minutes. But at this point, it’s time to add in all of the potatoes and all of the park cooked veggies and just stir those in. We need to get everything submerged. So, if the liquid has reduced a little bit, you may need to add a little bit of chicken stock or a touch of water. Once it’s all snugged up back in the liquid, the lid goes back on. I’ll throw it back in the oven at 300° for another 45 to 60 minutes. But I am going to check back halfway through to give things a stir just to make sure stuff’s not getting stuck to the bottom of the pot. And I’m back. Just coming to pull it out and give it a stir just to make sure that everything is submerged and that things are cooking evenly. And that looks good. So, I’m going to put the lid back on and cook it for another 25 to 30 minutes. And after 2 and 1/2 hours in total, I’m going to pull it out and check the beef for dness. And I’ll check the carrots and potatoes, too. It should come apart nicely, but it shouldn’t totally fall apart. And then the carrot should just be nice and tender, fully saturated with beef. That was so hot. Oh my god, why do I keep doing that? And then finally, I’m going to add in about 90 to 100 g, I’ll get them all in there, of uh frozen peas. And then I’m going to let this whole thing cool down for about 30 minutes. Then I’m going to pop on the lid and throw it in the fridge to rest it, preferably for a couple hours or overnight would be best. The next day, I’ll just heat this up and get rid of a little bit of the excessive fat. Since this Irish stew is thickened with flour, it holds fat a lot better than the goulash, which isn’t thickened with anything but onion. Once defhated, I’ll bring this up to a simmer and stir it every couple of minutes gently so I don’t overshred the beef or mash the potatoes. To serve, I’ll drop two big ladles worth into a low bowl. Then I’ll sneak in a crusty piece of bread and give it a taste. M. That is so cozy. It’s like wool socks. It makes you feel safe and comfortable. It honestly makes me want to fire up one of those vibe tainment channels that’s like jacko’lanterns and rain and comfortable seats and a cackling fire and soft piano jazz. Fire that up and take a bite of stew. That sounds so fun. M I love stew. Finally, up next is the king of all stews, beef bergen. To get started, I’ve got 3 to 3 and 12 lbs of cut up boneless chuck roast. For this dish, I’ve got these pieces cut quite a bit larger because for me, bergen is more about two to three large pieces than it is four to five small ones. This is because the sauce is quite a bit different than the first two stews. It’s a lot more intense. It’s a lot more reduced, and that density of flavor works better when there’s less surface area. To prep it, same as before. Long drizzle of olive oil, big four-finger pinch of salt. Then I’ll toss to get the beef covered. Then I’ll throw it onto a sheet tray. Then I’ll give it the oven sear treatment under the broiler for about 15 minutes. Next things next, while that rips, I’m going to make what’s called a wine reduction. First thing in is going to be one bottle or 750 mls of dryish wine. By the way, my preferred cooking red wine is just Boda Box Cabernet. It’s cheap. It’s pretty palatable and it tastes good when cooked. Next, into the reduction, I’ll add 300 g of rough chopped onions, 300 g of carrots, 150 of celery, couple heads of chopped garlic, few sprigies of thyme, and a couple bay leaves. From here, I’m just going to jump in, bring it up to a simmer, make sure everything’s submerged, and reduce it until the veggies are softened and the wine has cooked down by about 75%. By the way, I’m reducing the wine here because I think that it helps round off the tannins. It decreases the acid somewhat, and it cooks off that raw alcohol flavor. And when you combine it with the sweet aromatic vegetables like carrots and onions, it brings a little bit more sweetness that helps balance out the super intense meaty flavor that you get from the roasted beef. And after about 15 minutes of reduction, I’ve got the wine cooked down to about a cup and a half. It’s also been about 15 minutes over at the oven. And at this point, the beef is all roasty and seared. And we didn’t have to make any mess doing this on the stove top. Next, I’m going to take a big grip of cheesecloth and fold it in half and then in half one more time. and then lay the whole thing into my Dutch oven. Make sure the burner is off, by the way. This cheesecloth will incinerate in seconds. Then I’ll add in 900 g of beefto with four packets of powdered gelatin whisked into it. 15 g of tomato paste, 20 g of better than buon beef base. Then I’ll add in all of my seared beef and all of the juice and drippings from the tray. Then I’ll just stir the beef around to get it evenly submerged in the liquid. And if you’re really worried about the brazing liquid being a little bit too low, you can always add in a little bit more water or beeftock. We’re going to be reducing the hell out of this later on, so the amount of water at this point isn’t super important. Now, the lid goes on. Then I’ll throw this into a 300F oven to braze for about 2 and 1/2 hours, possibly three. After 3 hours of brazing, it’s time to pull this out and check on the beef. Woo! Man, that roasty beefy wine smell is so sick. And yeah, that’s so perfect. As you can see, it’ll shred if I want to shred it. It’s so unctuous. The collagen’s all nice and melty. From this point, same as before, I’m going to let it cool for 30 minutes, then throw it in the fridge with the lid a jar to cool down overnight. And then tomorrow, we’ll turn this into a proper stew. The next day, I’m going to come back and pull off some of the excessive beef fat on top. We can leave a little bit behind, but we definitely don’t want it to be a greasy sauce. There we go. Then I’m going to pop this on heat and melt the brazing liquid so that I can pull out that cheesecloth package of tender beef. 2 minutes later, we’re liquefied again. So I’m going to very, very carefully pull out the cheesecloth. Ooh, it’s a little warm, guys. Be careful. I’m going to use tongs for this. That’s what a chef would do. So I’m going to very carefully with tongs lift out the cheesecloth package of beef. And I’ll just move this over to a bowl. And I’ll move the cheesecloth and instead of throwing it right into the trash, I’m going to throw it into a strainer that I’m going to be using to strain off the rest of this brazing liquid. But I’m just going to squeeze. There’s so much stock in here. This is the most flavorful part of the entire dish. And you don’t want to lose a drop. There’s probably a half cup in this cheesecloth. Then I’m going to very carefully pour the rest of that brazing liquid through the strainer. And then just like I did for the cheesecloth, I’m going to come back and push it through. These vegetables are totally saturated and we need to get as much of it as we possibly can. Once strained off, I’m just going to pour this brazing liquid back into my Dutch oven. And then I’m also going to add in another 300 g of beefto with one more packet of gelatin. At this point, if you’re wondering why we sacrificed all those vegetables and kept them separated from the beef via cheesecloth, it’s because the final and best version of this dish requires you to have a reduced glossy sauce that kind of coats everything. And you just can’t get that result if you cook everything together at the same time. That would be what’s called an integrated form of cooking. The first two recipes in this video were integrative, meaning that all the stuff cooks together, and all the textures come together at the same time, but it limits what you can do texturally. Cooking in a non-integrated form where you pull the beef out, get rid of the veggies, reduce the sauce, add in fresh veggies, and then add the beef back in gives you the best texture on the beef, the best viscosity of the sauce, and perfectly cooked vegetables. It’s the only way to get that done. At this point, the brazing liquid is back up to a simmer. So, I’m going to add in 300 g of chunky carrots. From here, I’m going to scoot this pot over to the back burner and reduce the volume by about 75 to 80% until it’s nice and sticky, while also cooking the fresh carrots until they’re perfectly stewy and tender. Up next, I’m going to drop a nice large sauté pan over my burner and cook the other main vegetable garnish for this dish. So, for that, I’m going to add in a long squeezer of olive oil. Then I’ll add in 275 gram of quartered creini mushrooms with a strong pinch of salt. A little bit more oil. Mushrooms are really thirsty. They soak up any oil that you give them. If you’re wondering why I just didn’t throw these mushrooms right into the stew with the carrots, it’s because mushrooms are not good when they’re cooked with only wet heat. They get spongy. They’re overly soft and squishy, and they don’t really take on any flavor. So, I like to give them a little sizzle so they can get some browning. And I like to cook off most of their moisture. That really concentrates the mushroom flavor, which doesn’t happen when you throw them right into wet heat. And after about eight minutes or so, these are looking good and they taste super sick. I’m going to set those aside. Then grab my pot that’s got my fresh carrots reducing. And the mushrooms go into that pot. And then I’m going to very, very carefully lower in my beef. This stuff is pretty tender. And you don’t really want to stir it or toss it around too much because it’ll start to shred down. I’m going to lower the heat, too. I don’t want to boil the hell out of this beef. We’ll go like medium low. As this reduces, I’m going to basee the beef chunks with the liquid. This is going to build up layer upon layer of this glazed lacquer that’s going to make a really savory, super intense exterior experience on this meat. This is looking really good. The bubbles are getting nice and big at this point. I think it needs about 5 more minutes to really reach that full glossy sticky potential. And after about 15 minutes of reduction in basing, the beef is super shiny and glazed up. And it’s got that meat lacquer that I was talking about. And the stock or brazing liquid has reduced to about 3 cups or so, which is going to be plenty for all of this because it’s so freaking intense with flavor. It’s very different from the stew gravy that we made earlier. This is at least 2x the flavor. Yeah, dude. The wine flavor is so prominent. It has this fruity sweet juiciness that the first two stews just don’t have. It’s really good. Now to plate this up, I’ll just put a couple of big dollops of potato puree in the bottom of a low bowl. Then I like to drop the veggies in next, carrots and mushrooms. Then I’ll drop on two huge chunks of brazed beef. And then finally, I’ll sauce it with three or four spoonfuls of the reduced brazing liquid. Be careful though, this stuff is super intense, and you want to think of it more like a restaurant sauce than a gravy. A little bit goes a long way here. And that is just absolute filth. Oh my gosh, look at that, man. The beef just shreds so perfectly. It almost looks like barbecue. It has that nice rosy look to it. My god, this is basically one Michelin star restaurant food that you can make at home. Yes, the process is a little bit complicated and long, but it’s so rewarding. Beef benign is the goated stew of all time. It’s the king. I bow down to it. I love it. I devote myself to it. Hey, if you guys like this video and you want to watch another video where I show you how to cook a bunch of stuff, then click on this video right here. YouTube picked it for you. It knows you very well. You’re going to love it. I’ll see you there.