Chunky Beef Stew Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to good beef stew? ›

Using the right type of beef, searing the meat before cooking, deglazing the pan, cooking for several hours, and using plenty of salt all make a huge difference in the flavor of your beef stew.

Go for the chuck

The most common beef used for stew is chuck steak, also known as gravy beef or braising steak. Beef chuck comes from the forequarter of the animal consisting of parts of the neck, shoulder blade and upper arm. It is easy to find and it's affordable, making it a great choice for your stew.

I almost always add some beef bouillon crystals to my stew, it helps oomph (yes, a technical term) the beefiness of the stock. Sometimes also use a few shots of worcestershire sauce or soy sauce - both will also add some oomph to the flavor.

The key to tender beef cubes is letting them cook and simmer on the stove for over an hour. On the other hand, if you want to take it one step further, you can always let it cook inside the slow cooker. So, if you choose this method, you must leave the beef for six to eight hours.

Chuck meat is your best bet for beef stew, but it's also a pretty tough cut so it needs time to break down and become tender. Rush the cooking process and the beef will be tough and chewy. Follow this tip: For really tender meat, cook the stew low and slow, for approximately two hours.

But the liquid itself should not be thick in the same way that gravy is thick. So skip the roux, and don't bother dusting the meat with flour or cornstarch before browning, either, as some recipes will suggest. That will just interfere with getting a good sear on the meat, and gum up the stew with unneeded starch.

Add vinegar when putting the meat in the pot after browning (Maillard reaction). Add spices at this time. Tough stew meat will take a couple of hours to get tender, and the vinegar helps this happen as well as add special flavor.

Oil - Use vegetable oil, olive oil, or canola oil to brown the beef and sauté onions. Vinegar & optional red wine - Use red wine vinegar and some red wine to give this stew a deep and rich sweet and savory flavor.

Even the best home cook has stared down into a simmering pot of stew and realized it looked more like soup! Sure, a bowl of soup can be comforting, but a true stew in all its glory should be rich and thick in consistency.

There is no real wrong answer for your beef stew potatoes — russets or red potatoes will work fine — but Yukon Gold potatoes have the best balance of texture and flavor to complement a meaty stew.

How do you make beef chunks not chewy? ›

When frying: Try using a less lean cut, or if you want to use a lean cut try marinating it in oil for a while beforehand. The fat; either natural in the beef, or oil from the marinade; will help you against dry and chewy.

The three main thickening agents for gravies are flour, cornflour and arrowroot. The first two are normally used in savoury dishes while arrowroot tends to be used in sweet dishes – that said, arrowroot will work in a savoury dish as it has no flavour.

Many stew recipes call for seasoning chunks of meat with salt before searing them or adding them unseared to the pot.

Simmer, don't boil. It starts out tough but long slow cooking will melt the connective tissue. If you cook past the time when the connective tissue is melted, you boil out all the water in the meat and it becomes tough again, like a well-done steak. So check your stew/braise and when the meat is tender, it's done.

The most likely cause of this is overcooking. As meat cooks, its muscle fibers shorten in both length and width and eventually squeeze out the juices they normally hold. As you can imagine, this leaves meat dry, and often stringy in texture. To avoid this problem, choose less-tender cuts of meat.