(upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music continues) (upbeat guitar music fades) (upbeat guitar music) - Some meals ask us to slow down a little.

They simmer quietly in the background, and before you know it, they've filled the whole house with the most wonderful aroma.

Today, is one of those meals.

So settle in and let's make a red wine beef stew.

One of the things I absolutely love about a stew like this is that we're building flavor from the very beginning.

So this is chuck, but get whatever you can find in the grocery store.

I mean, meat has become so expensive.

And the beauty of this stew is that it's just cooked slowly over time.

So it really gives whatever type of beef that you can find, it makes it tender and flavorful.

So, certainly no need to break the bank on the meat that you're choosing for this stew.

It's gonna be fabulous no matter what.

You know, the other thing I love about making a stew like this is it makes a lot.

And you can have some for dinner, you can have some for the week, or you can have it in the freezer.

There is nothing better than, you know, go into your freezer after a long day and just pulling out something that you've already made and that you know is delicious and just heating it back up.

So that's what I plan to do with this stew is get it made today and have it for several meals in the future.

So there we have it.

Just gonna move our cutting board out of the way.

And I have here just some regular all-purpose flour.

I am just going to use my hands because it's gonna be the easiest to just get the meat, a light coating of the flour, to get it ready for us to sear.

Perfect.

(spoon taps) I have a little salt and pepper that I'm gonna add.

'Cause I think it's always better to kind of season as you go.

So it just builds that flavor with each step.

All right, so our meat is now coated with our flour and we've got some salt and pepper going on here.

I'm gonna set it aside and we're gonna prep our veggies next.

(rustic guitar music) (rustic guitar music continues) (rustic guitar music continues) (rustic guitar music fades) (gentle guitar music) Okay, so I have my pot getting warm here.

I'm gonna add about two to three maybe tablespoons of olive oil and let that get a little shimmery and hot before we put in our stew meat.

And what we're gonna do is we are going to brown our meat in batches.

You don't wanna overcrowd your pan because then it really doesn't get that nice, brown, crispy edge, which helps us to build our flavor.

And if you can hear that sizzle, that's exactly what we want.

(pan sizzling) Maybe put a couple more in there.

(gentle guitar music continues) (spatula tapping) So, you know, I love making stew in the fall, in the winter especially, 'cause not only is it just warm and cozy and makes your house smell wonderful, but it's just one of those really comforting foods.

And the beauty is you make it pretty much all in one pot.

So, what's not to love about a stew?

And here you can see, see all of this brown on the bottom of the pan?

That is what's going to help build our flavor.

(pan sizzling continues) And goodness gracious, it already is smelling fabulous.

(pan sizzling continues) I've still got some olive oil in there, but I'm gonna add just a tad more and do our next batch until we get all of this meat nicely brown.

(pan sizzling) These are not as brown as you would normally get them, but we have so much wonderful brown, flavorful bits on the bottom that I'm not worried that these guys aren't, you know, like deeply seared and brown because they are going to continue to cook in the stew for, gosh, an hour and a half, up to two hours.

And so they're gonna get so flavorful and tender and cooked all the way through that that's why I'm just taking them out now.

But honestly, I love my... When I'm eating a steak, give me a rare steak.

My kids used to say, "Ooh, is it still mooing mom?"

That I like them.

I was like, "Okay, I do like a rare steak."

All right, here we go.

What we are adding up next is about four ounces of just regular bacon.

(pan sizzling) It's all just diced up nicely and we're gonna get that cooked through.

(gentle guitar music fades) All right, bacon is looking good.

The fat has been rendered.

(gentle guitar music) So now we've got all of that beautiful bacon grease that's in the pan.

And to that now, we're adding our chopped carrots and onion.

(pan sizzling) And we're just gonna let that cook.

We want our veggies to soften.

And that's gonna take us probably about five minutes, give or take.

(gentle guitar music continues) (pan sizzling continues) So look at how lovely these onions are looking.

They're nice and translucent.

Our carrots have softened.

And now, we're going to add our garlic that we chopped into the pot.

And we're also going to add two tablespoons of tomato paste.

Oh my gosh.

And you just want to go until the garlic becomes fragrant and when it hits that hot pan, oh my gosh, you can smell it right away.

So let's just give that a good stir.

We really don't want our garlic to burn.

That would just be so disappointing.

And I think now, (spatula tapping) we are ready to de-glaze our pan.

And for that, we have a pinot noir that I am using.

We need two cups.

(cork pops) In.

(pan sizzling) Ooh, listen to that sizzle when it hits the pan.

Oh nah, we're not there yet.

More give than take for our measurements here.

But the alcohol part of the red wine is going to burn off anyway, and all that will remain is a wonderful, smooth, kind of hearty flavor.

It's so hard to really describe.

You've got to try it though because the red wine just makes the stew so rich.

So what I'm doing now is I'm scraping up those brown bits off the bottom of our pan, 'cause we want it to get into our stew.

And while we're doing that, you can see that the red wine is boiling perfect.

It's boiling off the alcohol.

But we also wanna reduce the fluid in there a little bit and get it a little thicker.

And that's gonna take us probably about five, seven minutes or so more.

So you guys might be thinking, "Oh my gosh, there's just so many steps."

But there really isn't.

I mean, it's just such a great recipe and is worth every minute that you're gonna be standing in front of this pot.

This is looking lovely.

Our wine has thickened up a bit, and so now we're gonna put our bacon and our beef back into our pot.

Get all of those juices in there as well.

I'm gonna give that a little stir, get that in there.

Oh my gosh, looks fabulous.

And to that, now we are adding two cups of beef stock.

We've got a tablespoon of Worcestershire.

So I'll challenge all of you just to decide how you say that.

Is it Worcestershire?

Is it Worcestershire?

The interesting thing is, is it's actually named after the town that it is made in the UK.

So in goes our Worcestershire.

I love this.

It gives such a savory flavor to any sort of beef dish.

I use it to marinade meat.

I use it in stews clearly.

Sometimes I use it in some soups.

I mean, it is just a fabulous additional flavor.

So give that a little stir.

And then, we also are adding a bay leaf or two.

And I grow a bay leaf tree that I actually have.

I bring it in for the winter, but it's outside pretty much a good part of the year.

And you know what?

I never ever realized about bay leaves.

So here they are dried, right?

And I'm sure you guys have seen them and use them often.

(Stephanie sniffs) There's really no real scent to them.

They create a very flavorful, kind of herby, not quite floral flavor.

But I was with a colleague.

We were in the UK, in fact.

And we were walking along and there was just this most wonderful scent.

And she told me, she said, "Oh, well, those are bay leaves.

That's from the bay laurel tree."

And I was like, "No, come on!"

And sure enough though, the fresh leaves are so fragrant.

Into the pot they go.

We're also going to add just a little bit of pepper here.

We added salt before to our meat when we were... So I'm just gonna add a little extra pepper.

We can always put some more salt in as we taste it once it gets going.

We're just gonna give that a stir.

And last but not least, we have some fresh thyme that's just gonna go in.

All I did was tie a little bit of kitchen twine around our thyme, so that when this is all ready and cooked, all we have to do is find the string and to pull it out.

It'll hold onto the stems, but all of the leaves will have fallen off the stems and into our stew.

So I'm just gonna place that in.

Give it one last little stir.

(spatula tapping) (spatula tapping) Oh my gosh, it smells fabulous already.

So now for the easiest part.

We're going to let time do its magic.

(gentle guitar music continues) (gentle guitar music fades) (birds twittering) (gentle guitar music) (bee buzzing) (gentle guitar music continues) So I have here about a pound and a half of just some, any sort of waxy potato.

These are just the golden kind.

I'm just cutting them (knife clunking) into reasonable sizes to get them ready for our stew.

What I love about these golden potatoes are that the skin is so thin that you don't have to peel 'em.

And hey, if we're trying to do all of the other things that we're doing for our stew, that's just one last thing we need to worry about.

Whenever I make a stew like this, I usually like to add something green to the meal.

Today, it's a simple salad.

But there have been times when I've just tossed a handful of frozen peas into the pot and called it good.

To get started on our vinegarette for the salad, we're gonna chop our shallots fairly finely.

It's just a small shallot that I have here, but we wanna do that first so that it gets nice and soft when we add the vinegar and the olive oil.

So, this is looking good.

I'm just gonna scoop it up and put it in a bowl.

We are going to let that kind of marinate in just some vinegar, and I'm using red wine vinegar for this.

But you can use whatever you want.

I just am adding a tablespoon.

So just give it a stir.

(spoon clinking) And let that sit for about five minutes just to get the shallot a little bit softer and a little bit milder.

The vinegar helps to take away some of that oniony kind of harsh flavor.

To this, we are adding three tablespoons of olive oil And that's a pretty good ratio to always remember for a vinegarette.

One tablespoon of the acid.

So whether that's vinegar or lemon juice, to then three tablespoons of an olive oil or a vegetable oil, whatever you prefer.

And now to this, I'm also adding just... I've got two teaspoons of honey.

And I always like just a little bit of sweet in my vinegarette.

You don't have to add it.

But for me, I just think it gives a nice complexity into the vinegarette.

So we have that.

We're just adding a few pinches of salt and a few, maybe two pinches of pepper.

(spoon whirring) And you could whisk this, or as we're doing here, we can stir it together.

(spoon whirring continues) Just get that vinegar and olive oil combined.

And the honey helps, as well, to kinda bind oil and vinegar together.

(spoon whirring continues) (spoon tapping) That is looking good.

Let's just... Eh, I'm just gonna give it a little taste here.

Mm, perfect.

Not too salty.

Not too garlicky, oniony.

Absolutely perfect.

We're gonna set it aside then and let these flavors just continue to meld together while we make our salad.

This is just a head of butter lettuce that I've washed and shaken and dried as best I can.

But because it's a whole head and it's still got its core in, I'm gonna try this.

I know it works with iceberg lettuce.

I'm not sure if it works with butter lettuce.

We're about to see.

And I learned this trick from a dear friend of mine when she was working, this was back in the day.

I think there's still some around, but not sure.

She was working at Mr.

Jim's Steakhouse.

And she would make the salad for, I think it was a salad bar or whatever.

So we're gonna try it here.

You bang the stem or the... And let's see, magic should happen.

(lettuce plopping) All right, it's supposed to release the core, but clearly it doesn't work with butter lettuce!

So instead, we're going to plan B, which as I am cutting out the core.

Oh, man.

So you've gotta try it though.

The next time you have iceberg lettuce, honestly, it works.

It works beautifully.

Hey, shout out to you, Anita.

Hope you're still coring your lettuce the same way.

All right, here we go.

(lettuce plops) Lovely, and see how once you get that core out, it just... Oh my gosh.

I mean, this is a beautiful, beautiful head of lettuce.

So we're just going to chop them up.

And again, we don't need to do any sort of fine chop.

It's nice to have some decent sized leaves to catch that dressing.

But we don't, you know, need it to be so large.

And it doesn't matter.

I mean, we can just roughly chop.

And I'm just gonna put it back in my colander here.

This is really just a simple, simple salad.

And you can add whatever you like to your toss salad.

Mine's just pretty basic here today.

We've got all of that goodness and richness in the stew, so I'm just keeping our salad really basic and simple.

Here, I've got an English cucumber.

I like to use the English ones because they have less seeds.

And I think they're just a little bit on the sweeter side.

So rather than to put these all together in the colander, let me pull out my salad bowl and we'll just start adding everything to the bowl here.

And then what I love about these just kind of simple toss salads is you can really choose any herb combination you like.

Today, I'm just using a little bit of parsley, a few chives, fresh dill.

Gosh, it smells so fresh.

That's lovely.

I'm not going to dress this just yet.

I'm gonna wait until we are ready to serve before I put the vinaigrette on.

But I do want to give it a little toss.

I am gonna give a little peek under the lid and see how our stew is doing.

(gentle guitar music) Okay, let's see.

Oh, it is looking great!

(lid plunks) Look at what a deep, brown, rich color that is.

Let's get these bay leaves out.

I can see one peeking out here.

And here's my other one right here.

And now we're gonna get our thyme out as well.

Here it is.

See?

Just the stems.

Leaves are in the stew as they should be.

Lovely.

Now, what we're gonna do is we're going to take a few of these potatoes out and we're gonna mash 'em up.

So I don't need all of them, but I just want enough that when we mash 'em, the starch from the potatoes themselves help to thicken the stew.

Here, I think that should be good.

So I'm just mashing up.

(masher clinking) Doesn't have to be perfect.

We're not serving creamy mashed potatoes here.

But you want it mashed enough that the starch is released.

Looking good.

And now just back in.

(spoon clinking) That's good.

And I'm just gonna stir it around, get it all into the stew.

(spoon whirring) It'll thicken a little bit more as time goes on.

But look, you can already tell that that starch has really started to thicken things up a bit.

You can see that at all.

Mm, but that is a really great way to make... Anything, if you have got potatoes in it, a nice way to make things a little bit thicker without adding anything else to the mix.

All right.

(spoon tapping) Mm, it smells wonderful too.

All right, let's let that just go for a few minutes.

We're gonna put our vinaigrette on our salad and give that a toss, and we're getting ready to eat.

(gentle guitar music continues) Isn't it amazing what a little time can do?

We started with some simple ingredients and with a little patience, they've become something really special.

I think that's one of the reasons I keep coming back to meals like this.

They remind us to slow down, stay a while, and enjoy the moment.

(gentle guitar music continues) (gentle guitar music continues) (gentle guitar music fades)