{"id":182,"date":"2010-09-28T00:31:48","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T04:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/?p=182"},"modified":"2010-09-28T00:31:48","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T04:31:48","slug":"stew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/?p=182","title":{"rendered":"Stew"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Stew, Pre-Cooking<\/p><\/div>\n

As it has started to get a little chilly I became fixated on my favorite fall dish: stew.\u00c2\u00a0 The process for making stew is simple.\u00c2\u00a0 Buy some beef, cut it into small pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 Get some veggies, either bought small or cut into small pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 Find some herbs.\u00c2\u00a0 Brown the meat, and add all of the chopped stuff into a pot or slow cooker with some beef broth and the herbs. then let it cook for 12 hours or so (18 hours never hurt anyone).<\/p>\n

But, before I could start I needed a pot.\u00c2\u00a0 I left my well used slow cooker back in Minnesota two years ago and while it might be moving to New York with Fayaz, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t willing to wait until mid-October.\u00c2\u00a0 Still I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to get another slow cooker, potentially ending up with two in the house.\u00c2\u00a0 Over the summer Meg had gotten an amazing Le Creuset enameled dutch oven.\u00c2\u00a0 So before my stew making I headed out to look for a similar pot.<\/p>\n

I started my search at Whisk, a fantastic cooking store in Williamsburg.\u00c2\u00a0 I found the Le Creusets colorfully sitting in the front of the store as always, but the prices seemed about $40 more than they should have been.\u00c2\u00a0 I next somehow ended up at Create and Barrel.\u00c2\u00a0 The only enameled dutch ovens they had in the store were the Mario Batali line.\u00c2\u00a0 Now I loved Batali on Iron Chef, but the whole celebrity chef branding thing kind of annoys me.\u00c2\u00a0 But more than my annoyance, the Mario dutch oven just looked much less substantial than the Le Creuset.\u00c2\u00a0 After a little foodie message board research I found a few complaints about the Mario line cracking\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot the dutch oven I was looking for.<\/p>\n

So I next headed to William\u00e2\u20ac\u201cSonoma.\u00c2\u00a0 Walking in I remembered how dangerous that store can be, how everywhere I look I see something else that I \u00e2\u20ac\u0153need.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 With the help of a sales woman I found the Le Creuset I was looking for, the 5-qaurt yellow oval dutch oven.\u00c2\u00a0 But, as the manager went to the back to get the dutch oven I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been looking at, the sales woman told me I might want to check out Staub.<\/p>\n

I coincidentally had seen a debate on Staub versus Le Creuset on the boards while evaluating the Mario dutch oven.\u00c2\u00a0 The conflicts, in my mind, came down to personal opinion.\u00c2\u00a0 Some thought that, over the years, the Le Creuset\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cream colored interior stained.\u00c2\u00a0 The Staub camp felt the dimples in the Staub lid helped self-baste the joys in the pot.\u00c2\u00a0 In the end, I was persuaded in part by the dimples and in large part by the price and got the Staub.<\/p>\n

For the Stew I first hit the farmer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s market.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel the heart of any stew is the potatoes, so I got three kinds: blue, red and yellow fingers.\u00c2\u00a0 I kept the potatoes I purchased small so pre-cooking cutting would be unnecessary.\u00c2\u00a0 In addition, I got some great small onions, a rainbow variety of carrots, some celeriac (celery root, which is great because I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like celery in my stew and it gives the celery flavor without the need for nasty celery), some herbs.\u00c2\u00a0 For the herbs I got a one bunch of savory and one bunch of thyme.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I also got some stewing beef (aka \u00e2\u20ac\u0153low quality\u00e2\u20ac\u009d beef chunks) and beef broth from Key Foods.<\/p>\n

To start the stew I browned the outside of the meat (NEVER cook it all the way, that makes it too chewy) added the beef broth and veggies (chopped where necessary), and the herbs.<\/p>\n

When the stew first got started I was very worried I had gone too strong to the hoop with the thyme and savory.\u00c2\u00a0 The smell of these herbs filled the apartment and in the past when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made stew I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve used a similar volume, but\u00c2\u00a0 greater diversity of herbs.\u00c2\u00a0 But, as time went by, the fragrances of the herbs in the apartment diminished.<\/p>\n

As the stew cooked the bright colors of the potatoes and carrots diminished.\u00c2\u00a0 The dark blue of the potatoes, the red of the other potatoes and some the carrots faded.<\/p>\n

But even faded, these colors added a great visual element to the stew (and at a increased cost of only about a $1.50 for the whole pot, relative to the normal boring colored ingredients).<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Stew, All Cooked<\/p><\/div>\n

When the stew was done, I fished out the stems of the herbs (where I more fancy I would have used an herb bag\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsomeday).<\/p>\n

The end product was great; the perfect stew for a cool fall day.\u00c2\u00a0 It was far more than Nick and I could eat in a sitting.\u00c2\u00a0 But it kept well in the fridge. \u00c2\u00a0What couldn’t be eaten from the fridge we froze.\u00c2\u00a0 While not ideal\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfreezing made the veggies became overly soft\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfreezing still gave us great stew over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Overall, I had a great kick off to fall cooking.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, with the 80 degree heat in New York, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll need to wait a bit longer, but soon my new pot and I will be back to some great work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As it has started to get a little chilly I became fixated on my favorite fall dish: stew.\u00c2\u00a0 The process for making stew is simple.\u00c2\u00a0 Buy some beef, cut it into small pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 Get some veggies, either bought small or cut into small pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 Find some herbs.\u00c2\u00a0 Brown the meat, and add all of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","tag-stew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.eatcooklive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}