Last weekend at the grocery store, I made sure to pick up the ingredients for beef stew so I could try out the crockpot that I’ve had for a while  but never actually used.  I made stew Friday, throwing everything together into the crockpot and leaving it to cook while I went about my The Day From Hell™, and everything was ready when Roger got home, which was just awesome.  It turned out pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.

Again, I forgot to take pictures.

Note: The recipe below is for a crockpot/slowcooker, but I’ll include additional notes at the end on how to adapt it to stovetop pots, since that’s what this recipe originally came from.

Ingredients:
This serves probably 4-6 people, depending on portion sizes. We got about six bowls out of ours total.
3lb stewing beef
6 medium potatoes (I used russet, but whatever you like works)
A similar quantity of carrot (to taste, really. I cut it down to about 1/2 the amount of potato since I’m not that into carrot, but YMMV)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (it’s pronounces wuss-ter-shir)
2 tins condensed beef broth
2 tins cold water (I just re-used the beef broth tins)
2 bay leaves
Table salt
Garlic salt

Instructions:
If your meat isn’t already cut into cubes about an inch around, defrost and do so (you’ll need to take it out of the freezer and put it into the fridge the day before to defrost it). Really, because of the cooking time in the crockpot this works equally well with defrosted or frozen meat, so long as it’s cut to size.

Put the meat into the crockpot, cover with flour.

Wash and cut potato, carrot, any other vegetables you want to add into inch-ish chunks. Add vegetables and bay leaves to crockpot.

Add in Worcestershire sauce, beef broth and water. I tend to mix these together in a bowl first, because of the limited stirring room once the vegetables are in the crockpot.

Add garlic salt and table salt to taste – a light shake of each works well for me.

Stir everything up.

Put on High for 6 hours or Low for 10 hours.

Et voila!  I served in bowls with fresh dinner rolls, and it was just divine.

Instructions (non-crockpot):
Instead of being able to dump everything into the crockpot and let it simmer most of the day, you’ll have to start it off and then add the remaining ingredients towards the end.  It takes less time overall, but I find it easier to just leave everything in the crockpot than to keep coming back to check pots.

The vegetables still need to be washed and cut up, and the meat cubed. You will need to defrost the meat ahead of time.

Put beef broth, water, meat, carrot, and any other non-potato vegetables into a large pot. Bring to a boil, then cover and let simmer on low for about 90 minutes.

Once the time is up, add the potatoes, Worcestershire sauce, salt, garlic salt, flour and bay leaves to the pot. If necessary, add just enough water to cover the ingredients.

Stir, cover again, and simmer on low for another 60 minutes. Check periodically to ensure there is enough liquid.

And serve!