Skagit River Ranch has more than excellent beef, pork, chicken, and eggs. They also have a wide variety of recipes using their products. Tonight's recipe: beef stew with bacon. Mmmmm. Bacon. Everything is better with bacon. (NOTE: as a general rule, I'll * the ingredients that are either local or organic.)
First, the ingredients:
- 4 oz thick cut bacon *
- 3 tablespoons flour
- Salt and pepper
- 3 pounds of boneless beef chuck or beef stew chunks *
- 3/4 pound cremini mushrooms *
- 1/2 pound baby carrots *
- 1/2 pound frozen pearl onions
- 3 cloves chopped garlic *
- 1 cup dry red wine
- 1 cup beef broth *
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste *
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary *
So how'd we do on the local/organic purchasing this week? Very well. We bought a pound of bacon from Skagit on Saturday. Unfortunately, we ended up burning most of it, so the bacon we actually used for this was bacon from the local butcher's shop. The beef was from Skagit, and the garlic and carrots were from the local farmer's market. We picked up organic cremini mushrooms and tomato paste at our local supermarket. The rosemary came from our own garden.
The onions... well, a word about the onions. The recipe calls for a bag of frozen pearl onions. I just don't like frozen pearl onions. When they cook, they end up a soggy mess. Instead, we used cocktail onions in vermouth. These onions cook up crunchy, with just a bit of tang.
So now... onto the cooking!
J actually made this while I was at work, so I'll turn it over to him.
Ok, J here.
The recipe itself is pretty easy. Chop up the bacon, cook it until it's crisp, something I've started to fail at recently. Oh, no, it isn't what you think. If it was that, I'd just cook it longer thus making it crispy. No, I've been discovering how to make charcoal (albeit bacon scented) in the cast iron pan. I was a bit worried that it was too burnt. But, well, it was going to end up in a stew, I figured it might be ok. We'll ask P what she thought after this.
Once the bacon is all crispified, remove most of the drippings, leaving a tablespoon or so in the pan. Obviously, you'll wait for it to cool a bit.
While that's combining, take the flour, some salt and some pepper and mix it in a bag. Then, throw the beef in and shake to coat. Or, at least, that's what the recipe says. 3 pounds of beef is alot when put in a bag. So, I actually recommend doubling the amount of flour and splitting it over three bags and splitting the beef up. Half of the beef for ours wasn't coated in flour, or even touched by it.
Pop the frying pan back up the medium high and brown the beef in shifts.
Well, unless you have a gigantic pan, in which case, you can put it all in the single pan. But, barring that, brown beef, put in slow cooker, brown beef, put in slow cooker, lather, rinse, repeat.
It'll probably take 5 minutes a side, and you only need to flip them once. Remember, you aren't cooking the beef, you're just browning it.
Once all the beef is in the cooker, throw the mushrooms, carrots, onions and garlic on top.
Back to the frying pan, pour in the wine, beef broth and tomato paste, mix, boil, deglaze, scrape crunchy bits into the sauce and then pour over the stuff in the crockpot.
And, if you're like me, you can throw in a splash of bourbon at this point too.
Cook on high for 4-5, or low for 8-9 (hours, natch, it is called a slow cooker for a reason).
When it is done, pull off the top, mix in the bacon (remember the bacon?) and rosemary and cook on high for 10-20 minutes and serve it up, fresh and hot, with a nice piece of bread.
Or, if you're like us, end up with tons of plans and throw it in the fridge for a couple days and reheat a couple servings when you're finally ready to eat.
All this said, if this is the last stew of the season (and the weather is looking nicer day by day), it was an excellent choice.
So, I'll had this back over for P to give her opinion on how it was, but me, I liked it. P?
Meyephonshrumf mrnosh ruwosh. Oh, sorry everyone. My mouth was full of yummy stew. I've liked this recipe both times we've made it. I think it could have used a few sprinkles of salt, but then again, I like salt on a lot of things. Once the beef has cooked for 8-9 hours it practically falls apart at the mere sight of a fork.
I wasn't a fan of the bacon, but it wasn't due to its bad charcoal imitation. I can really tell a difference between Skagit's bacon and the bacon from our local butcher shop. They are both good, but Skagit's bacon just seems more flavorful. I think next time we make this dish, I also want to double the carrots. Though it's likely that'll be sometime next winter.
