I love beef stew - when it's made sans tomatoes. I especially hate beef stew that is made with vegetable juice cocktail, and it hates me back :) So we created a recipe that was easy, and had no tomatoes. I also don't like overly fatty stew, so we make sure to use a lean cut of meat. Yesterday we used some sort of round, it was marked as lean stew meat, and we could easily see that there wasn't much fat on it.
First we tossed the beef cubes in some seasoned flour and browned them in a bit of olive oil. Towards the end, we added in some chunks of sweet onion.
Once everything was nice and browned we added the broth and the seasonings, brought everything to a boil and then turned down the heat to a simmer, covered it, and let it simmer for an hour. Now, I have to mention our secret ingredient to the stew. To give the stew a bit more depth of flavor, we added cumin to it. It didn't give it heat, just a smoky, earthiness, that we really like.
Once the hour was up we added the carrots and potatoes and then a slurry of cornstarch and water. We actually ended up doing that twice, I think because our meat to broth ratio was a bit high on the broth side. After it came back up to a boil, we turned down the heat and simmered it, uncovered for 30 minutes.
Beef Stew
1 pound lean stew meat
2 tablespoon flour seasoned with salt and pepper
1 medium sweet onion, chunked
2 teaspoons minced garlic (I'm lazy and buy the pre-minced kind)
4 cups low sodium beef broth
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 pound of carrots chunked
6 small to medium red potatoes cut in half
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