Winter Beef Stew
As Winter creeps in, we’ve been keeping our residents cosy and warm with this hearty beef stew. Taking inspiration from Jamie Oliver, we served this with mash, but you could choose any potato form! And whilst it takes a while for the meat to become tender, the actual cooking process is super easy to follow.
Ingredients
- 1 onion
- 2 parsnips
- 4 carrots
- 1/2 a butternut squash
- sage leaves
- olive oil
- small knob of unsalted butter
- 800g of stewing steak, cut into roughly 5cm pieces
- plain flour
- 2 tablespoons tomato puree
- 1/2 a bottle of red wine
- 285ml beef (or vegetable) stock
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 lemon
- 500g potatoes
Method
- Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.
- Prepare the veg: peel and chop the onion, parsnips and carrots. Deseed and dice the squash. It’s up to you to decide how big you want the veg – we decided to keep the carrots in big chunks for maximum flavour and texture.
- Heat the oil and butter on medium heat, before adding the onion and sage leaves, and frying for a few minutes.
- Whilst the onion is frying, toss the meat in some seasoned flour, then add to the pan with your prepared vegetables. Add the tomato puree, wine and stock, gently stirring it all together. Season with black pepper and sea salt.
- Bring to the boil, then place the pan in the oven until the meat is tender. This can take between 3 – 4 hours depending on what meat you’re using. Jamie Oliver recommends taking a piece of meat and trying to mash it up – if it falls apart easily, it’s ready.
- Once cooked, turn the oven down to about 110 degrees, just to keep it warm until you’re ready to eat.
- Then you can prepare the accompaniments, such as potato or warm bread.
- Finely grate the lemon zest, pick and finely chop the rosemary and garlic, then mix together and sprinkle over the stew before serving.
And you’re done. Simple, but so effective.
And for something sweet for dessert, why not try our raspberry tart?
