Red wine beef stew
Need a recipe for dinner? Try this red wine beef stew recipe serves with boiled or mashed potato. This is the quintessential beef stew.
- Recipe serves:4
- Preparation time25 min
- Cooking time120 min
Ingredients
- 2 tbs olive oil
- 4 bacon rashers, trimmed, chopped
- 1 large brown onion, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 kg beef chuck steak, trimmed, cut into 3cm cubes
- 2 tbs plain flour
- 250mls (1 cup) dry red wine
- 375mls (1 1/2 cups) beef stock
- 1 x 400g can peeled whole tomatoes, undrained, mashed
- 3 medium (about 300g) carrots, diagonally sliced
- Salt & ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh continental parsley
- Boiled or mashed potato, to serve
- 2 Royco Beef Cubes
Method
- Preheat oven to 160C.
- Measure and prepare all your ingredients.
- Heat 2 tsp of the olive oil in a large, heavy-based ovenproof saucepan or flameproof casserole dish over medium-low heat and cook the bacon for 3 minutes.
- Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes or until the onion is soft.
- Add garlic and cook for a further minute or until aromatic.
- Remove the bacon mixture from the pan/dish and set aside.
- Add 1/2 the remaining oil to the saucepan or casserole dish over medium-high heat and cook 1/2 the beef for 1-2 minutes, tossing occasionally, or until browned.
- Browning the meat will start to develop the flavour as well as add colour to the casserole.
- Sprinkle the meat with 1/2 the flour and cook for a further minute.
- The flour is used to thicken the sauce as it cooks.
- If you don't cook the flour at this stage before adding the other ingredients, an unpleasant raw or floury flavour will be left in the casserole.
- Remove the beef from the pan/dish and set aside.
- Repeat with the remaining oil, beef and flour.
- Remove the beef from the pan/dish and set aside.
- Add the wine to the pan/dish and bring to the boil over medium-high heat. This is called deglazing.
- Cook for 1 minute, scraping the base with a wooden spoon to dislodge any residue left on the base of the pan/dish.
- Return the onion mixture and the beef to the pan/dish.
- Add the stock, mashed tomatoes and carrots, Royco Beef Cubes Beef Cubes and stir to combine.
- Bring to the boil over high heat.rn
- Cover the pan/dish and cook in preheated oven for 2 hours or until the beef is very tender.
- An oven temperature of 160C will ensure the casserole simmers steadily.
- It is important that it doesn't boil rapidly as the meat will become very tough and stringy.
- Long, slow cooking of the casserole ensures that the meat is tender and the sauces develop a full-bodied, rich flavour.
- The main advantage of cooking a dish like this in the oven, as opposed to on the stove top as with a stew, is that there is no chance of the ingredients sticking and burning on the base of the pan/dish.
- Remove the pan/dish from the oven and use a large metal spoon to skim any excess fat from the surface of the casserole.
- Season with salt and pepper and then stir through the parsley.
- Serve with boiled or mashed potato.