It’s tax day in the United States, and I needed to find an easy to prepare crock pot meal, because this year’s taxes were a bit more time consuming than usual. I chose a crowd pleasing favorite, at least according to Pinterest – Beef Stew!
This particular recipe has a couple of options as to how to prepare the stew. As I mentioned before, I was in a bit of a hurry, so I went with the faster option. First, I gathered my ingredients: 2lbs of stew meat, 4 tbsp of olive oil, 2 tsp minced garlic, 10-15 small red potatoes, 1 medium onion, 2 cups of sliced carrots, 2 cups of sliced celery, 1 cup of red wine, 1 can of diced tomatoes (I left these out), 1 bay leaf (I left this out, too), 1/2 tsp dried thyme, 1 tsp dried parsley, 1/2 tsp allspice, and an 8 oz. container of mushrooms.
Once I had everything together, I turned the crock pot on low and started assembling the stew. I used pre-cut beef, but I had t0 chop up all of the veggies (carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, and potatoes).
Now that all of the large stuff was in the crock pot, it was time to make the sauce. In a separate bowl I combined the oil, spices, wine and beef stock. I whisked it to combine everything, and poured it over the meat and veggies.
Then I set it and went about my business… for 10 hours or so. I smelled delicious the entire time. The finished product wasn’t too shabby either. The longest part of the entire process was chopping up the veggies.
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