Zesty Three Beef Stew

Zesty Three Beef Stew

It is fall and fall always seems to say Stew to me...but Mark and I wanted something different than a regular stew.  We had these two full racks of beef ribs in the freezer that we didn't use during the summer because of the amount of fat on the racks and we had some stewing cubes that were sitting in the freezer dying of loneliness.  We hate to throw food out and I was already planning on making some meat sauce already so we decided to do a beef stew in the slow cooker while the meat sauce was bubbling away in the stock pot on the stove next to it.  

Zesty Three Beef Stew

2 racks                  Beef ribs

½ lb                       Beef stewing cubes

½ cup                    Red wine

½ tsp                     Salt

1 tsp                      Pepper, divided

1 lb                        Extra lean ground beef, cooked & drained of fat

5-6 dashes            Hot sauce (I used Tabasco)

10-12 dashes        Worcestershire sauce

¾ tsp                    Onion flakes

¾ tsp                    Piri Piri seasoning

3 ½ cups               Low sodium Chicken Broth

2 cups                   Hot Salsa

2 cups                   Marinara sauce

4 (large)               Carrots, chopped into chunks

8                           Red Potatoes, chopped into chunks

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Beef ribs tend to have a lot of fat on them so we need to start by parboiling them in the oven to render off a lot of the fat.  In two large Pyrex dishes each lined with aluminum foil, lay each rack of ribs.  Fill halfway up the sides with water and parboil the ribs for 2 ¼ to 2 ½ hours until they are cooked through and a lot of the fat has been rendered off.

While the ribs are parboiling, cook both the stewing cubes and the ground beef in two separate frying pans.  In one frying pan over medium heat, place the stewing beef and start to cook it until it gets a nice crust on all sides.  Add the salt, ½ tsp pepper and the red wine to the pan.  Continue to cook an additional 7-10 minutes until the cubes are cooked through.

In a second frying pan also over medium heat, add the ground beef, Worcestershire sauce, Hot sauce, ½ tsp pepper, onion flakes and Piri Piri.  Brown the meat until completely cooked through.  Drain the fat from the pan and put both the stewing cubes and the ground beef to one side.

Once the beef ribs are cooked through, the meat needs to be stripped from the bones and any remaining fat needs to be removed from the meat.  The meat on the ribs will naturally shred in your hands as you are removing it from the bones which is what you want it to do. 

Once that is done, you are ready to take this all to the slow cooker.  Start by adding all of your meats to the slow cooker.  Next add in the Marinara sauce and the hot salsa.  Star the slow cooker, set it to low and, if it is a programmable slow cooker, set it to 6 hours.

Once the slow cooker is going, peel and chop the carrots and chop up the potatoes.  With the potatoes, leave the skin on – there’s a lot of flavour in the skins.  Once the first hour has passed with the slow cooker, add in both the carrots and potatoes at that point and let the slow cooker continue to work its magic.

At the end of the 6 hours, if the mixture still looks more like a soup than a stew, remove a few chunks of potato and carrot and mash them in a mixing bowl.  At this point you also want to check the taste and adjust the seasonings, if necessary.  When I made this I added some more pepper, onion flakes and Piri Piri but didn’t need to add any of the sauces.  Return them to the slow cooker, turn it up to high, and let it go for another 45 minutes. 

Makes 6-8 servings, depending on your serving size

This makes a lot of food so if it is just the two of you, like it is for Mark and I, break out the storage containers and pop some in the freezer for a rainy day.  Enjoy,