Et Stew, Brute?

Our second snow of the season means it is probably time to dust off the Crockpot again. The recipe to first strike my fancy this go-round is good old reliably-comfortable Beef Stew.

Not sure where the recipe came from, but it was handwritten off somewhere on the web before I had easy access to things like printers. If the original author finds it here, please let me know your identity so your due credit may be finally paid-off.

INGREDIENTS:
2 lbs. stew beef
¼ cup flour
1 tsp. paprika
4 lg. carrots
3 lg. potatoes
1 can condensed beef broth – 14.5 oz.
1 ½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 lg. onion
1 can tomato sauce – 8 oz.
1 small can mushrooms or a liberal amount of freshly sliced ones.

Cube up the potatoes -- after washing them -- and layer them in the bottom of the cooker, layer on top of that your sliced-up carrots. Cover that with the meat. Sprinkle the soy sauce, salt, paprika, pepper and flour next. Over that mixture spread out the onion which you’ve chopped. Then add the beef broth and tomato sauce. (If you’re using canned mushrooms, I usually put them last – if you’re using fresh mushrooms I usually put them on after the meat.)

Cover and cook on either the low setting from 7 to 8 hours or on the high setting from 4 to 5 hours.

Very different from my first stew made of Sunday pot roast leftovers when I was probably 7 or so years-old. Cubed up the roast beef and mixed it with the potatoes, carrots, and gravy, but realized there were not enough potatoes so I grabbed some from the bag in the pantry, cut them up and heated the mess together for my mother’s lunch.

People over 30 may realize what happened, may remember when potatoes in a bag usually came still covered with chunks of the earth in which they grew. Yes, I skipped the step of washing the potatoes first.

She took a bite, pulled a clump of dirt from her mouth, and told me about the pre-washing step. She also proceeded without complaint to clean out the bowl – except for the potatoes.