Slow Cooker Stew-day

While I am frankly sick to death of talking about it, you may have heard: it's effing cold in Chicago right now. Like, maybe permanently? It's been cold for so long, it seems really reasonable that this is how it will be forever. I historically have been The Cold's #1 fan, but my radiator wasn't working last night and the overnight temps dropped to -2 and it was just like, seriously, enough. In short, it's finally cold enough for stew.

Stew is basically hibernation in food form. It's a little too hale and hearty for me most of the time, but with the next ten-day forecast looking like the last ten-day forecast (which is to say, shitty) and a really long way to go until March, I'm ready to admit, it might be Stew Time. 

I'm not anti-stew, or whatever, but it's just like, well, honestly, it's a lot of ingredients. You know how I feel about this many ingredients. Agitated is what. 

But like, full disclosure, I also sort of added ingredients. Because what I DO like about stew is that it's pretty accommodating. Once you have the basics (beef, I guess?) taken care of, you can just sort of improvise the rest. I started with this Real Simple slow-cooker recipe and then when I got inspired to add parsnips, I wanted to see if that was even a legit Thing and lo and behold, no less than Martha freaking Stewart validated my ingredient punt. So, the ingredients are all assembled, let's stew this!

Ingredient Family Portrait. I count eleven and that doesn't even include most of the spices. Oy.

First things first: we're going to cut up some meat. You may notice that I opted for the very simply named "beef stew meat" from Trader Joe's and it is also, helpfully, already cut. I could have just stopped there, but you know when you're eating stew, and it's like, there's way too much meat in your mouth, and you sort of feel like a caveperson? (please note my gender neutralism here today. Mad props to my MANY male readers.) So, yeah, I'm in control of this stew, and I went ahead and cut these pieces even smaller than the 2"x2" recommended in both recipes!! I obvi did not bust out a ruler for my cutting, but I'd approximate these guys are in the 1"x1" range. I know, so rebellious! "Bite-sized" by a fully evolved human. I did a pound of kosher fancy beef, you could do the two the recipe calls for if you're like Scrooge McDuck rich.

Counter space, actual size.

This naked beef needs to take a flour bath in advance of getting browned. The recipe just calls for a half cup of flour but you know I like to add stuff and plain flour just seems like too good of a blank canvas to leave alone. I added unmeasured amounts of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes. I took a picture, and then I forked it up.

Messin' around with the flour, doin' my own thing.

Then I dunked my beef in the flour bath, and spoiler alert: that is the most fun part of this recipe prep. I'm not going to say it is terrible from here out, but enjoy this flour dunk while it lasts.

Naked no more!

Wait, spoke too soon. This olive oil swirl was the most fun part! Gosh, we are having sooooo much fun!

Clearly just proud of the swirling action.

So, you may remember from my last beef-themed post, it was a little less preparation than I was really into. Like, too easy. One of the things I'm way into about this particular recipe is that while it is slow-cooker (duh), there's also some legitimate prep involved. Cutting and meat-browning and the like. You know, so you feel like you've earned it.

So many meat shots.

So, brown that meat up. It's going to get cooked later, so let's not get too precious about this browning process. Beef is less sensitive than chicken, so you can kind of just do whatever. I mean, I'm not totally sure how true that is, but like,... I'm giving you permission.

Too many meat shots?

Once the meat is sufficiently browned (I browned it a little more than this picture above, but not thaaaat much more), move the meat to your crockpot pot. Then in the SAME PAN (love), get into an onion cooking scene. This was another place that I improvised a little based on Trader Joe's inspiration. I do love chopping, but onion chopping is just so much. I can't. Also, I'm terrible at it. Nobody cares what onions look like inside things but you've seen. It's bad. Enter Trader Joe's being The Best and having pre-cut onions. Amazing. Also pre-cut garlic and shallots mix. SOOOO great. This recipe calls for garlic and not shallots, but whose gonna be sad about shallots coming to the party? Not me. Come on over, shallots. Each of these environmentally unfriendly (sorry, Mom!) containers has about a cup, and this recipe only called for a cup of onions and a bit of garlic, so I suspect we're going to have a pretty funky party. 

Yeah, my tongs are microphones. For impromptu kitchen sing-alongs. Sometimes you get onions in your eyes, but you still can't fight the funk.

This onion remix is going to cook for about ten minutes which I totally realized in advance, so now we have time to read the rest of the recipe prepare our vegetables. I got regular carrots instead of baby carrots because I have baby carrots at work and felt bad about buying more instead of using the ones that I already own even though they are at work and not where I need them to be today and welcome to the complex vortex of guilt that is my mind. These are also organic, because I was probably still feeling a little guilty about those plastic containers, so why not? Peel those and then chop 'em. Again, in the 1"x1" bite-size zone on the cutting. We want to cook with the end in mind and the end of this stew is eating this stew and I don't want too big of burny veggies in my mouth.

Haaaaaave you met my friend, Parsnip?

Let's talk about parsnips. They're great. They're sort of spicy? I don't know why I got so compelled to include them here, but I feel really good about it. Sort of like a genius a little. So, peel those bad boys up and invite them to the root veggie party that is this stew. You're wondering how many, right? Oh you, always so preoccupied by details, you're adorable. I did five carrots and those four parsnips you see above. Probably a pound between the two. 

Then it's potato time. I don't peel my potatoes. Partly because I like the skins, partly because I'm lazy. I swear it's an equal balance of the two. I think we'll all live if we have potato skins in this stew. If you can't, spend your day peeling perfectly good skins off your potatoes. Your call.

The purple potatoes are clearly the Prince of this bowl.

Okay, our root veggie party just got wild with the addition of those funtime potatoes. Everybody's cut sort of similar sized, but we can all acknowledge, pretty unpicturesquely. It's stew, get over it. Or cut yours prettier, but don't come back to me and say how long it took to make this stew, because that's on you now.

Back to our onions. We're about ten minutes into them cooking, so let's add six (adorable) ounces of tomato paste and mix it up. Because that's what the recipe says and whatever, sometimes we follow those.

I find this can precious. I have a huge thumb, so you can see how really fantastically tiny this can is.

Cool, cool. This whole shebang is going to go into the pot now. I have my pot on my stove for this portion, because it's not quite ready to be crocked yet. You do you.

IN THE SAME pan, pour a cup of "dry red wine", or whatever super cheap questionably wet or dry red wine you have in the house. Who knows such things? I mean, people do. I don't. Nor do I care. My Two Buck Chuck (nouveau, natch) works fine (I assume?) and is... present. This wine dump is intended to help you get the scrapings out of the pan. I don't know if I had that many scrapings, but you know what a slave I am to following recipes, so like, I swished it around a little and then poured it in the pot. Ask your root veggies to bring their party to the pot and dump those suckers in too. Mix it up now, before things get too crowded and no one has enough room to dance.

Good focus, both me and the camera.

Once everything is sort of tossed together, we're going to add our beef stock. The recipe calls for two cups. I'm not great at measuring (even though I have adorable measuring cups!), so mine probably had about two and half. Whatevs.

If you ever see whimsical kitchenware and wonder, "who on earth would use that?", the answer is me.

Before you pop the pot into the crock, add in whatever sort of herb situation you're into. Not like, drugs. This isn't THAT kind of pot (har, har.) Actual herbs. The recipe called for thyme and a bay leaf, but I didn't want to buy bay leaves for ONE MEASLY bay leaf singular, so I didn't. I assume it doesn't lead to the complete downfall of this whole stew, but you know, that's a risk I'll take. I DID buy a whole thing of fresh thyme, mostly because Trader Joe's brand of herbs is called Infinite, which means that the thyme is called "Infinite Thyme". So, yeah, love.

Sprinkle some more salt and pepper at will. Maybe a little more garlic powder. Whatever's still out was the ultra discriminating method I used for this portion. Less of a method than a random crapshoot, really. But such is stew, I think. Into it. 

Four hours on high if you're hungry and/or have shit to do, or a freewheelin' seven hours of thyme-smelling deliciousness on low later, and you've got yourself stew. You're stewin' it! Just stew it!

It's prettier when you close your eyes and just eat it. Look with your mouth.

Slow Cooker Sunday: A Spicy Beef Recipe that Needs to Exist on The Internet

This is what it looks like outdoors in Evanston right now.

My mom said this looked like Divergent, which made me super proud of her pop cultural awareness.

They are calling for -50 degree windchill tomorrow, UChicago has already announced that "non-essential staff" (hey, that's me!) need not bother coming in to work, the Packers and 49ers are playing at Lambeau Rink, and I have about seventy-five things to do for an event next week that I would like to avoid doing at all costs. If there was ever a day that called for crock-potting, this is it.

I've been trying to get my hands on this spicy beef recipe since I first had it at my BFF-in-law's parents house about two years ago. I cannot remember the occasion that I was there for, but I have the tendency of showing up at people's parents house for family gatherings... sort of a lot. I like to think that it's because of my excessive parent-specific charm, but I suspect that it is primarily because I am 100% on board with inviting myself to things at which I probably do not belong.

Anyway. I was there. Stuffing my face inappropriately with this spicy beef concoction on tortillas and RAVING about the experience (Parent-Specific Charm 101: Be inordinately impressed with fairly basic but well-loved family recipes.) BFF-in-law's mother (are the relationships getting complicated yet? I'm not going to clarify further) was pleased with my enthusiasm and trying to explain the recipe's simplicity to me so I could recreate. This was pre-me owning a crockpot and also WELL before I even began to conquer my fear of cooking meat independently, so while I could theoretically understand that yes, this was a very basic recipe for something so out-of-this-world amazing to taste, it seemed really out of my culinary reach. Also, I have a terrible memory and pretty shitty auditory processing, so obviously, I did not remember how she told me to make it.

Enter me harassing my BFF to get the recipe from her mother-in-law for me for like four months. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus here and I do understand how in-law politics can make such things somewhat more difficult, but like, mission: not successful. My BFF, who is spectacularly better at cooking than I am, gave me the basics of this (yes, I will say it again) VERY basic recipe, which essentially boiled down to: beef, garlic, peppers, cumin. To an actual cook, that's enough to make a solid start. To me, there were far too many unconfirmed, potentially disastrous, variables. WHAT KIND OF BEEF. HOW MUCH BEEF. BEEF? I AM SCARED OF BEEF. Mostly that.

Fast forward 18 months and because I have nothing better to do with my time, I am still preoccupied with getting this recipe, but woefully incapable of using basic resources (hi, The Internet) to suss it together on my own and fairly certain (completely positive) my BFF is sick of me asking about it. WELL. Guess who WASN'T sick of me asking about it? That's right, BFF-in-law, whose very mother was the source of the recipe in the first place. One excessively long plea from me, minor eyerolls from BFF, and a short forwarded text message from his mom later and here we have it.

Never change, Autocorrect.

After deducing that "racist" was Apple's hilarious interpretation of "roast", and calming my anxiety over HOW MUCH garlic powder if you punted with the substitution (obvi), I had my very own spicy beef recipe, stored right on my phone, just waiting for a day that the healing properties of cumin (right?) could preemptively combat the cold my body is threatening to unleash the day before this big event next week.

So, here it is. The EASIEST most DELICIOUS thing you will ever make, right after avocado toast. Don't even get me started on avocado toast. It should be sainted.

Ingredient Family Portrait, starring That Beef, which is a total ham. Pardon my mixed meat metaphors.

Yes, I still had to have a psychological intervention hosted by the butcher and butcher's assistant (?) at Jewel before actually getting the right cut of meat. But, even just having this giant slab of beef in my kitchen getting put to immediate use is a really big moment in my life. Let's proceed to the actual recipe, because having now read approximately 100,000 words preamble, I think you will be pleasantly surprised how short and sweet we can make these instructions.

1. Put the beef (3-5 lbs chuck roast, or if you're me, single, and/or broke, 2lbs which is honestly, hi, more than enough) in your crockpot, which maybe at this point in your life, you have named (Bettina) because you don't have a pet and you kill plants.
2. Sprinkle (2tsp?) with garlic powder (YOU could be ambitious and go for fresh garlic, but I don't enjoy how it makes my fingers smell for like seventeen days, and honestly, it's just a pain. Also, I'm not gaga for garlic like everyone and their mother. Sorry, Mom.)
3. Dump half the peppers onto the meat. Did I mention the peppers? You need one "large jar" (choose your own adventure) of pepperoncinis. Some juice will be coming out too. Cool. That's what's supposed to happen. Thanks, pepper juice.

One half the dump.

4. Put the cumin (2 tbsp, or like, whatever) in the pepper jar with the remaining peppers and juice and shake it up. Hope you put the top back on before you shook, goofball.
(I totally made this step up because otherwise, this recipe was actually TOO easy and not occupying nearly enough time to justify how much I was procrastinating on returning angry alumni emails.) (Also, it seemed like a totally fun chef-y sort of thing to do.) (Whatever. You don't have to do it.)
5. Dump the remaining peppers and pepper-cumin juice atop the meat.

The other half the dump. If this was a Highlights magazine, could you even tell the difference?

6. Put the crockpot lid on.
7. Plug in the crockpot. (I'm stalling now, this is seriously the easiest recipe ever.)
8. Dial that puppy to low and set your alarm for 7-8 hours, or if you're busier, hungrier, and/or more important than I am, crank it up to high and set for 5-6 hours. If you're feeling like you want to make this beef experience super thematic, maybe you use the Marimba setting for your alarm, so that when it rings, you know you're in for a real spicy treat.
9. Seven hours, sixty-two emails, ninety-eight edited program pages, one toilet scrubbing (procrastinating), two loads of laundry, and one deep conditioning treatment later: Voila! Spicy Beef!
10. Fork that goodness apart, sneak some pre-bites while you do, and Tupperware it up for your dorktastic lunch (and jesus, probably dinner, this week is going to be terrible) all week long. I didn't take a picture of this part, but it looks like shredded beef in Tupperware. Use your imagination.

I'm pairing mine with these fun whole wheat/corn mix tortillas I found, restaurant-style salsa that I did NOT make, and cilantro coleslaw that I sort of did make if you consider combining coleslaw mix and cilantro dressing "making" something. It also seems like it could be super fun to serve with eggs for an awesome breakfast burrito. Or tacos. Whatever. You do what you want with yours. We all win.

On it's own, this meat is not so photogenic, but pop anything on a red plate and I'll want to eat it.