Recipe - Stew

Aah, good old stew.

I'm still waiting for my delivery of mint extract. I've been wanting it for a while now, but shops in the Netherlands don't sell it. Apparently, Dutchies hate mint. Except for this Dutchie, she very much likes mint and wants to make her own mint chocolate.

Anyway, I've ordered it online, but it hasn't arrived yet. So while I can't try anything new yet, I want to share my Stew recipe with you. It's been posted on my Wordpress blog before, but hey, it's still winter and it is very tasty (and no one visits my blog anyway).

Basically, I like stew just the way it is, so I don’t mess around with it too much. I switch around the vegetables a bit and use other liquids sometimes (we were very sad we didn’t think about buying some Guiness to substitute the wine), but that’s about it. Oh, and some recipes call for flour.. I messed that up big time last winter, so no flour for me! I don’t miss it anyway. Here’s the basic recipe I use.

Ingredients:
– 500g Stew meat
– 400g Carrots (I mixed in some parsnip aswell)
– 2 Onions
– 500g Potatoes
– 400ml Red wine
– 400ml Water
– 3 Bay leaves
– 8 Cloves

1. Cut up the onions in large pieces.
2. Heat up plenty of butter in a large stew pan.
3. Add the meat to the pan and sear on both sides for a couple of minutes on medium/high fire.
4. Add the onions, wine, water, cloves and bay leaves and bring to a boil.
5. Lower the fire to its lowest (maybe even move the pan to a smaller fire), put the lid on the pan and let this simmer for a couple of hours.
6. About an hour before dinner: clean the carrots, cut them up in small pieces and add them to the mix.
7. About half an hour before dinner: clean (or peel) your potatoes, cut them in smaller pieces and cook them untill they’re ready (about 15 mins after boiling, depending on the size of the pieces).
8. Mix the potatoes and stew on your plate.

Enjoy!

So what’s your favorite winter comfort food?

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Originally posted on my foodblog.