Monday, November 9, 2009

A Fall Comfort Food - Oven Beef Stew



I have an old cookbook that I really enjoy which was published in 1979 and is called Better Homes and Gardens All-Time Favorite Recipes. I bought it at a library discard sale for $1.00. This cookbook has everything you could think of in it and I've cooked many dishes based on its recipes. Often I will find several versions of the same dish which allows me to choose the one that I already have the ingredients on hand for. There are 1007 recipes in there!

Saturday I made Oven Beef Stew that I adapted from a recipe in this cookbook, since I had a large pack of marked down stew beef that I grabbed Friday afternoon at Food Lion. I hardly ever purchase any meat that isn't on a good sale or has been marked down. The marked down meat goes home and is either immediately cooked or frozen. The stew beef I bought Friday had a couple of days left on the "sell by date" so I waited until Saturday to use it.

This recipe make 4 to 6 servings, so be sure to adjust the amounts if you don't need this much. Three of us at my house ate this Saturday at lunch and there was a big bowl of left overs.

Oven Beef Stew

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt or salt to taste.
2 Dashes of pepper
1 1/2 to 2 pounds boneless beef stew meat, cut into 1 inch cubes
2 tablespoons cooking oil
2 10 3/4 ounce cans condensed tomato soup
2 soup cans water
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon dried basil, crushed
4 to 6 medium potatoes, depending on size, peeled and cubed
4 medium carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces
1/2 cup water

Combine flour, salt, and pepper; coat meat cubes with the seasoned flour. In a small dutch oven brown meat in hot oil. I used a frying pan and then transferred the meat to a roasting pan. It took two batches, since I had a large amount of meat. Add the two tomato soups, the soup cans of water, chopped onion and basil.

Bake, covered, at 375 degrees for 1 hour. Add potatoes, carrots, and 1/2 cup water; cover and bake until meat and vegetables are tender, 30 minutes to 1 hour longer.

This turned out really good and is a great Fall comfort food!

6 comments:

Little Penpen said...

beef stew is one of my favorite dishes! when it's just the "family" i serve it right by itself... however, when I have a larger crowd i have a hard time figuring out what to serve with it. my friend always serves coleslaw and cornbread with hers. (ps... i dreamed i bumped into you and met you at a local gas station last night...you guys were on your way for a duck hunting trip!)

alexis said...

Oh my goodness! My mom has that exact same cookbook and we grew up eating that beef stew! Makes me a bit nostalgic....

Anonymous said...

That sounds so good for this time of year. I love older cookbooks too!

Alexandra said...

This looks so good! We made some of those potato wedges tonight and they turned out nicely. I used seasoning salt and paprika.

Deborah said...

My husband just got me an enameled cast iron dutch oven. I've wanted one for the longest time, but thought it too expensive. He found one on Ebay and I love it. I made the best beef stew I've ever made in it.
So now I have a new recipe to try! It looks great. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

You inspired me to do a small beef roast with carrots and potatoes - all done in the oven!

It was so good!

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