From beef stew to stewed beef to pot roast, whatever you call it how do you make it?

[XERTYX]

Ok so one of my guilty pleasures in life is beef stew. I have seen many recipes some using crock pots, others using pressure cookers, and of course the oft overlooked dutch oven. What are your favorite ways to make it?

Mamas recipe as best I remember it and with my own flair:

Chuck roast
Potatoes
Onion (whole and sauteed) 
Carrots, baby
Garlic, fresh
Salt
Pepper
Flour
Tomato paste (optional) 

First off flour and sear the beef in a hot skillet with olive oil and set aside in a dish.

In the same oil saute the onions, garlic, and when the onions become translucent add in the any dry spices and toast them in the oil until fragrant. 

Add the onion mixture to a crock pot, pressure cooker, or Dutch oven along with beef and juices from cooled beef, water to cover or less if slow cooking for several hours.

If adding canned ingredients use less water and keep the skillet on the heat and deglaze with water from canned goods (english peas are ideal for this)

Add water as necessary. 

Cook until finished (I like mine falling apart into flakes) if adding tomato paste wait until 20-30 mins before done as the sauce will be thick from the flour and it will bubble and burn to the bottom.

I have another experimental pot roast I made last week using sriracha sauce, butter, sugar, and vinegar (think buffalo wing sauce roasted beef) that I'll share if there is enough interest in the thread.

 

[Kaylee]

I have another experimental pot roast I made last week using sriracha sauce, butter, sugar, and vinegar (think buffalo wing sauce roasted beef) that I'll share if there is enough interest in the thread.

Porn.
Please.

I shouldn't have to ask.

More seriously, I and others would particularly welcome austere field expedient techniques, as opposed to, um, "luxury" stuff.
High on my Wishlist is a can of freeze dried precooked beef, for making stuff like this.
Thanks to the "Yummy instant potato find" thread, I was inspired & successfully experimented with Beef Shepherd's Pie, and can cook that with as little as 2 minutes fuel.
I'm a big fan of Beef Stew and all its close relatives.
Thanks for starting a thread aimed at those!

 

[XERTYX]

I intend to do a minimal beef stew test soon. I have an ultralight backpackers stove on the way from amazon and I need to figure out a few easy meals with it anyway.

The sriracha beef could be made entirely in a dutch oven. I used a dutch oven for the latter part but for cooking just the meat I experimented with a rice cooker as I'm on shore power. Yes beef can be made fall apart tender in a rice cooker without it shutting off from over temperature.

I have a couple of fun projects coming up in cooking as well as electrical.

EDIT.
Oh also I found canned ground beef on Amazon cheaper than raw at the grocery store, they also had roast beef but I dont belive its packed in gravy. I forget the price of it though.

 

[Kaylee]

XERTYX: I'm 100% for folks experimenting while in b&c, and you are a true Food Hacker!

One of my forum, um, "beefs" is when non-dwellers blithely post recipes/etc, and fail to mention they're talking about b&c only and haven't given the least iota of thought to doing the same in a dwelling environment.
This isn't Facebook.

Please post more info about this "canned ground beef"!
Do you mean "Keystone"?
https://www.amazon.com/Keystone-Meats-Natural-Canned-Ground/dp/B00B59QDEC/
https://www.amazon.com/Keystone-Meats-Natural-Ground-Ounce/dp/B00B59QBBW/
Have you tried it?
Review please.

That's intriguing, but the can size is still challenging for those of us who are fridge less.
Total no-brainer if one does have a fridge.

Why a backpacker stove, instead of a flat cartridge stove?
I had the vague impression you were going to be in a van, but I could be wrong. The backpacker stoves make absolute sense in a car environment.

 

[B and C]

Easiest beef stew is Dinty Moore, heat-n-eat. Lived on it in my younger years.

X, sounds pretty close to the pot roast recipe most use. I think a pressure cooker is the fastest way to do it and uses the least energy.

 

[XERTYX]

Yeah I've never used a pressure cooker since the tragedy....

For me flour is a necessity. Lately I've always done pot roasts mostly in a Dutch oven with a wood and charcoal fire. The sriracha one was an experiment on making the rice cooker a viable option if power wasnt a huge issue. I forgot to time it and I dont have a watt meter so I dont know the average usage but I'm going to try and do it on the butane stove with a tiny dutch oven.

The reason I chose the ultralight was because I'm building a pack with essentials and once I have a 3 day plus pack assembled I can fix or replace my propane stove and have redundancy. In the mean time I would have a tiny kitchen that fits on my back if I have to hoof it in an emergency.

Also the stove I chose is 12k btu. That's more than my old 2 burner combined.

 

[Kaylee]

Ah! Your Logic is superb!
Yes, my own backups include a couple of Sterno stoves, FRHs (Flameless Ration Heaters), and my van's dash (free solar).
If my used crockpot is viable, it'll also be a good backup.
Redundancy is good.

Have you checked your Library system for loaner kill-a-watts?
Free is good!
That's where I got mine.
If they don't have (or can't request one), try your electricity provider.

I look forward to the results of your experiments.


P.S. Brian: +1 to Dinty Moore!
I scored some on sale a couple of months ago, and am still kicking myself that I didn't stock up more.

 

[jimindenver]

I put a chuck roast (or whatever is on sale) in a 3 quart graniteware pan. Then shove as many washed and chunked potatoes, carrots and onions as I can into the pot. Season, Put the cover on and place it into a solar oven or reflective cooker for 3 to 4 hours or until fork tender. There will be plenty of juice for gravy even though no water is added but usually it is so moist that you really don't need it.

It takes longer for bigger roast and also in the winter. I had a couple in Quartzsite want to try the ovens last winter. They had one roast in a 3 quart pan in the sport oven and two more in a turkey roasting pan in the sun oven. They placed the carrots and onions along side of the roast and then a layer of half potatoes over everything. They got them in the ovens between 10 and 11 AM and left them all day. Sooooo tender.

Turning it into beef stew is just cutting up the roast and mixing in the potatoes, onions, carrots and spices. Letting them cook until they are done, topping off with water and veggies that you don't want mushy, stir and let cook a additional 30-60 minutes or until the veggies are done to taste.

 

[maki2]

Unless you are slow cooking in a ductch oven over a camp fire stew you will want to save fuel by using a pressure cooker either stovetop or electric.

Brown the meat, onions, garlic, maybe mushrooms, spice to your personal preferences. Add water, or wine, or Guiness depending on your mood. Put in whatever veggies you want. Follow the guides for your pressure cooker for time. When pressure drops open the lid, then thicken the juice with flour or corn starch.

 

[XERTYX]

Well I guess there is enough interest to share the strange sriracha stew I made.

I bought some deli fried chicken and a cook in bag seasoned beef roast on markdown on the same day.

I made a simple buffalo sauce in my rice cooker using butter sugar cracked black pepper and sriracha sauce. I added the chicken into the pot to warm and sauce it up.

After the chicken was sauced I had a good bit of sauce left and didnt wanna save it but I also wanted to cook the beef before it went bad so I added the following; 

More Sriracha, butter, pepper, sugar, vinegar, 2 chicken drumstick bones, beef pot roast, garlic powder, olive oil, kosher salt, and a splash of brine from some pickle relish.

The thermostat never kicked it off I think because I added the salt and vinegar. Salt makes water boil higher than 212° and vinegar has a lower boiling point than water anyway.

It cooked for quite a while and the smell attracted a pissed off pasture hornet that I had to chase out of the room. I guess the vinegar steam and sugars drew him in. 

The following day I grilled the rest of the sauced chicken and on the same fire added the falling apart beef and crumbling 2 chicken bones to a dutch oven with halved potatoes, and a can of english peas including juice, added water as needed and cooked until the peas were melting into the sauce and potatoes were beginning to turn mushy on the outside. 

The beef was flakey, the peas were like lentils, the potatoes perfect, and it was a sauce with a kick. Also I only found 1 of the chicken bones. The other dissolved. My inspiration was the delicious Pakistani nihari masala that I've only ever made from a packet. It was no nihari but I ate for days on it.

 

[SheketEchad]

I should not read these threads 'twixt lunch and dinner as I think they frown on drool on work keyboards....

 

[Kaylee]

Hitting my LOL button again (twice today for SheketEchad)!

Keep on, keeping on, y'all, with beef & veggies goodness.

 

[maki2]

I make green chili stew using tomatillos, corn kernals, the meat is pork which is generally much more affordable than beef.

 

[Firtree]

I search Amazon for almost everything. The Reviews both 5* and 1* are informative.
But depending on the item I try to remember to visit eBay and for food stuff, Walmart dot com

The Keystone meat in the 28oz can appears to be cheaper at Walmart and you maybe able to ship it to a local store for pickup if you can’t reach the $35 to free shipping line. If it says you can ‘pickup today’ means they currently have in that store. Note: the cheaper price was for the beef meat not the ground beef.

I love the stuff y’all find and tell about.

 

[gwave]

Hitting my LOL button again (twice today for SheketEchad)!

Keep on, keeping on, y'all, with beef & veggies goodness.

There's never a good time to ask but I've been curious why you bold random words and strings.

 

[Kaylee]

Thanks Firtree!
By "beef meat", do you mean "roast beef"?

Your online food shopping strategy is excellent!
Walmart is aggressively competing with Amazon, though sometimes they both have brain-missing farts.

When that Pumpkin SPAM is released, I won't be near a Walmart, so will either have to wait about a month, or order it online, so will be looking for stuff to frugally pad out an order.
Will probably wait.

My issue with the larger cans is that I don't know if that's practical for we few, we fridge free few.

 

[Kaylee]

There's never a good time to ask but I've been curious why you bold random words and strings.

They're not "random".

Sounds like you have a processing difference.
It appears to be a problem for you, so consider investigating your browser settings and/or control panel ("ignore" list) options for eliminating that distraction.

 

[Firtree]

Kaylee, guess you could call it roast beef, on can they call it ‘BEEF’. The can picture is more chunks vs ground.
This is from Walmart site
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Keystone-All-Natural-Beef-28-Oz/22309254

I’m seeing in Costco a 4 ? Packs of canned beef or pork. -They’ve always carried the white chicken meat in multi can packs.
Smaller cans than Keystone but larger than reg tuna. Still much for one person, one meal. Might get by w/out refrig if you ate the meat for bft, lunch and dinner in some form in a day. ??

As you know, Walmart appears to carry even smaller tuna like cans of meats if you hunt around a large store. Pricy for size but can add variety to eating.

 

[Kaylee]

Firtree, thanks for the clarifications!

Yes, I have done some one-can-in-one-day, for example: Corned Beef Hash, Vienna Sausages.
Even the small can of beef seems too large for that (I tend to eat smaller amounts of meat).
I'm trying to get into the habit of doing stuff like that right after town runs, when I typically have ice, so have more options for 1-2 days.

I do buy the small cans of ham, plus, I still have plenty of SPAM Singles.

I'm very pleased with the beef flavored TVP I've been using in Shepherd's Pie. It solves the fridge problem.
Am very interested in trying freeze dried real beef.
Once I'm solvent, that's one of the top 4 items on my Wishlist. I will post results of that, whenever it finally happens.

 

[gwave]

They're not "random".

Sounds like you have a processing difference.
It appears to be a problem for you, so consider investigating your browser settings and/or control panel ("ignore" list) options for eliminating that distraction.

Not a problem, I was just wondering. Thanks