Beef Stew with Dumplings

If I'm Sisyphus, then beef stew is my boulder. I keep trying and trying to get it right, and failing every time.

But tonight it finally turned out! FINALLY!

And now I need to write it down before I forget the things I did. I grabbed the stew recipe from "A Pinch of Yum", but modified it.

Oh, but definitely don't get "stewing beef" from the meat section of the grocery store. It's just not right. 

Stew:
2 tsp canola oil
2lbs beef, chuck roast, chopped into roughly 1 inch pieces
2 small onions
2 stalks of celery, chopped into thick pieces
6 carrots, chopped into thick pieces
3/4 cup passata
1/4 cup water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp white sugar

Dumplings:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp unsalted butter
3/4 cup milk

Instructions:

Set Instant Pot to Saute. Add oil. Once oil is hot, add beef in batches (I did three) and remove each batch to a plate when browned. 

Add the remaining ingredients for the stew to the Instant Pot, including all the beef. Set Instant Pot to Meat/Stew function (should be 35 minutes) and let it do its thing.

When finished, set your oven to 400F. Let the stew sit for 10 minutes, then release the pressure. 

Meanwhile, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Use your fingers or a pastry cutter to mix in the butter. Once the mix looks a little shaggy, add the milk and mix until it looks REALLY shaggy.

Drop dumplings approximately 2 tbsp in size all over the top of the stew.

Put the Instant Pot insert directly into the oven (just the metal insert, not the whole pot) and let it cook for 20 minutes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carrot Cake (Looneyspoons)

The Podleski sisters have a lovely carrot cake recipe that you see everywhere, but before that pumpkin-based carrot cake recipe, they had one that used pineapple. It's really hard to find, and I've even lost the cookbook it was in, but I dug though the depths of the internet and finally got it back, so I'm posting it here so I can find it in the future. Must Bake Carrot Cake Recipe By : Janet & Greta Podleski, "Crazy Plates" book Serving Size : 1 Preparation Time :0:00 Categories : Desserts/Cakes Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method -------- ------------ -------------------------------- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons cinnamon 1 1/2 teaspoons each baking powder and baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups brown sugar -- packed 1 cup crushed pineapple (see Cooking 101) -- drained 3/4 cup fat-free egg ...
Read more

Grandma Cardiff's Fruitcake

Image
This recipe is originally from the Toronto Star, published by Mary McGrath, who was apparently "The Star Home Economist". I wish I had that title. Anyway. The recipe title was, "Willis Davidson's Fruitcake". My grandmother cut it out to keep, gave it to my mother, and my mother added her own hand-written modifications: Every Christmas, my maternal grandmother, and then my mother, would pull the tinfoil- and cheesecloth-wrapped loaves from the fridge to slice up for everyone to enjoy. It's all very gauzy and Dickensian, but in all honesty, this fruitcake is amazing. Since it's the only one I grew up eating, I never really understood the whole "use the fruitcake as a doorstop!" trope. Then one year, I bought some grocery store fruitcake. I saw that it had icing, which I thought was weird, but hey, fruitcake, right? Wrong. It was dry. There was peel in it. It tasted like damp newspaper wrapped around old apples. No wonder it needed icin...
Read more

Perfect tea biscuits

I've always struggled with finding the perfect tea biscuit recipe, in the correct proportions, i.e. not making a dozen of them, because after the meal, I'll just binge on the leftovers. This recipe finally came out both perfectly, and in the correct amount! So I'm posting it despite its simplicity. It's about the basics, people. 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tbsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 6 tbsp salted butter 2/3 cup milk Preheat oven to 400F. Mix the dry ingredients together. Then use a pastry cutter, or your hands if you're lazy like me, and smoosh the butter into the dry mixture. Add the milk, and mix together into a shaggy dough. Knead the dough until it's no longer ridiculously sticky. Split into six balls. Roll into equal-sized balls, and then squish down into patties. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Put the dough patties on it, spaced out as much as you can. Bake for 20-22 minutes or until golden brown.
Read more