Tonight I made "Weeknight Beef Stew" out of America's Test Kitchen's "The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook" (p. 46).
The Process: Took about 1h40m, including prep time. I can probably get this down to about 1h10m as I get more familiar with the recipe and don't have any distractions. This was a very enjoyable and satisfying process though.
The Verdict: 8.5 out of 10. Totally delicious flavor, but the meat wasn't quite as tender as I would have liked, and the potato could have used 5 more minutes of simmering. Next time, I'll hope to find the proper steak as called for in the recipe, and see whether that bumps the rating up to a 9.5.
The Cost: $6.28 (steak $4 + onion $.30 + carrot $.33 + garlic $.15 + tomato paste $.20 + wine $.50 + broth $.30 + potato $.30 + peas $.20, plus negligible amounts of salt, pepper, thyme, flour, soy sauce, oil)
The Process: Took about 1h40m, including prep time. I can probably get this down to about 1h10m as I get more familiar with the recipe and don't have any distractions. This was a very enjoyable and satisfying process though.
The Verdict: 8.5 out of 10. Totally delicious flavor, but the meat wasn't quite as tender as I would have liked, and the potato could have used 5 more minutes of simmering. Next time, I'll hope to find the proper steak as called for in the recipe, and see whether that bumps the rating up to a 9.5.
The Cost: $6.28 (steak $4 + onion $.30 + carrot $.33 + garlic $.15 + tomato paste $.20 + wine $.50 + broth $.30 + potato $.30 + peas $.20, plus negligible amounts of salt, pepper, thyme, flour, soy sauce, oil)
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| Preparing the beef broth ahead of time. |
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| I used grapeseed oil to brown the meat, and I think it worked well. |
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| I actually did a bit of prep work this time -- here are the chopped onion, sliced carrot and minced garlic. |
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| I had trouble finding the "sirloin steak tips" called for in the recipe, so I went with this top sirloin steak which happened to be on sale. I look forward to making this recipe again with the proper meat. |
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| I weighed out the appropriate quantity of steak and prepared to cut it up. |
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| The steak, all cut up and ready to be browned. |
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| Browning the steak in two batches. |
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| The first half of the steak, all browned and about to be set aside. |
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| Setting aside the first half of the steak after browning. |
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| Browning the second half of the steak. |
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| I've just added the onion & carrot to the fat left in the saucepan. |
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| I cooked the onion & carrot until softened, then added the garlic, tomato paste, thyme and flour. |
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| Here I've added the wine, beef broth and potato. |
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| After simmering for about 20 minutes, I added the frozen peas. |
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| Here I've added the browned beef back to the stew, along with some soy sauce, mixed it all together and let the beef come back up to temperature. |
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| The finished product! |
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| The finished product! |
I just purchased this cookbook and I'm super excited to try it out. I stumbled upon your page when I was looking at reviews and it is awesome! I hope you plan to post more in the future!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much! It's a great book! I definitely need to add more to this blog -- thanks for the encouragement. Cheers!
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