I Don't Need No Stinking Recipe

This was a blog entry I wrote for a sort of contest at Open Salon. I wrote it with this blog in mind. Sorry for the time between posts but a new job will do that to you.

I don’t have a recipe for stew. This is despite the fact that one of my absolute most favored winter meals in the whole world is a rich stew that has gently braised until a formerly tough piece of beef chuck has taken on a silky tenderness that gently but convincingly reminds me that winter and hearty red wines were made so I’d have an excuse to cook beef stew. Despite not having a recipe, I cook stew once or twice a month, at least and it never comes out exactly the same way twice. I follow recipes, but with stew it’s more a technique than a recipe and I still have a few things I have learned that always taste good in my stew. On the surface, beef stew is easy to make. And while making a bad beef stew is certainly easy, making a middling one isn’t too difficult either. But if you take your time, have some care with your ingredients and follow a few simple rules, you can make great beef stew and you won’t need a recipe either.



Rule #1. Brown food tastes good.

I didn’t come up with that saying. I totally ripped it off from Mario Batali’s sous chef Anne Burrell. But it’s worth remembering. Brown your meat. Good browning is not, as I used to think when I was first learning to cook, dumping a lot of meat in a sort-of hot pan and moving it around until it turns grey. If you want to get your meat BROWN, you need a searingly hot pan, you need dry beef and you need oil. Get your stewpot on your stove and put a couple of tablespoons of oil in it. Try to avoid extra-virgin oil because at high temps, like you need here, the good qualities of the oil all burn off. Use “pure” olive oil or canola.

Before you turn on the heat, take a chuck roast and cut it up into one-inch cubes. Don’t use “stew meat” of undetermined origin that is already cut into differently –sized pieces in your market. You don’t know what you’re getting and the pieces aren’t going to cook at the same rate. Cut that roast into cubes and blot them well with paper towels before seasoning with salt & pepper. A lot of cooks will flour their meat before browning it, but to me that always seemed like they were getting brown flour. Yes, the flour acts as a thickener but we’ve got that covered anyway. Now, crank up the heat and wait until the oil almost starts to smoke. It will shimmer on you. By the way, do not use a non-stick pan for this; a non-stick pan will brown the meat but it won’t allow you to develop what the French call a fond which is the dark-brown caramelization of the meat on the bottom of the pan. And you want that fond. Anyway, once the oil is shimmering, get your beef into the pan in one layer. And make sure that layer has plenty of space between the pieces of beef. It’s that space that helps the meat brown. Overcrowding your pot leads to steaming and steaming is an enemy of caramelization. Do not rush this step. Do not get all fussy and constantly turn the pieces of meat to check them. It will take 30-60 seconds for that one side to brown. If you try and lift it too soon, the meat will probably stick to the pan; this is good because it means you are working at the right temperature. If it sticks, don’t force it; the meat will let go of the pan when it’s ready. When it’s ready to turn, go ahead and turn it and make sure every side is browned. As the pieces brown, take them out and put another in and keep doing this until it’s all been browned.

A brief word about browning. A lot of people really don’t know what browned meat looks like. I’m going to help you with that. Browned meat looks like a well-cooked (not necessarily well-done) steak off the grill. You know how a good steak has a dark brown crust on the outside? That’s what you’re after. Again, do not rush this step.

While waiting for your meat to brown, why don’t you make yourself useful and peel 4-5 big fat carrots and a similar number of Yukon Gold potatoes? You will need them. But before prepping that veg, cut a big onion into medium dice and smash and chop three cloves of garlic? Take one more small onion and cut off the ends and remove the peel and then stick two whole cloves (the spice, not garlic) into the onion. If you have browned the beef well, you will have a nice brown coating inside your pan. Well done! That coating is going to be one of the most important things to the flavor of your finished stew. Now, get all the oil out of the pan and put another fresh tablespoon or so in there and get it back on heat and toss in the chopped onion with a pinch of salt. This is going to “deglaze” your pan. It will dissolve all that caramel-y coating and make your stew taste so good you will want to hit somebody. Move the onions around and let them soften but not get brown.

Which brings me to rule #2: Maximize Your Umami.

You can look in the interweb for the definition of “umami” and learn all about glutamates and such. Let me just keep it simple: Umami basically is what we sense as being “meaty.” There are a lot of sources of umami (aside from meat) and I have devoted my life as a home cook the last year or two trying to figure out how to maximize this flavor/sensation. Some sources of umami are: Anchovy fillets; tomatoes; mushrooms; soy sauce, red wine and vegemite. There are a lot of places you can get “umami” (even MSG), and I try to use every single one of them (except MSG). Using these ingredients will maximize the soul-soothing beefiness of your stew without unloading a truck of MSG into the pot. Here is what I like to do: Take two anchovy fillets and chop them up and mash them with a fork into a paste. Don’t worry, I promise you won’t taste anything fishy in the final dish. Mash up the anchovy with a tablespoon or two of tomato paste and then mix THAT up with your smashed/chopped garlic. After your onions have gotten translucent, dump in the anchovy mixture and stir it around the pot until you smell the garlic. That should be about 30 to sixty seconds. This mixture will also stick and brown the bottom of your pot. Don’t worry about it.

As you can see, we have already added two of our umami sources to our stew: the tomato paste and the anchovy. We still need to get in all the others. For the mushrooms, I like using dried mushroom as they are the most concentrated. Get some dried mushrooms. I like porcini but any will do. Rehydrate them in hot water before you start cooking and about now drain them and squeeze out the water. Chop the mushrooms and toss them into the pot. Save that rehydrating water!

Rule #3: Water’s only purpose in cooking is to dilute.

I once saw a cooking demonstration by the great Paul Prudhomme and he said that anytime water is added to anything you are cooking, it is added for the purpose of diluting something or making it thinner. This is true when you are making stock or baking and it is certainly true when you make stew. Chef Prudhomme’s point was that you should never add water if you can add a liquid that will impart more flavor and accomplish the necessary dilution. Applying this rule to your stew is easy. Never add water. If you need liquid, add stock, wine, beer, tomato juice or whatever else comes to your mind. Not vodka. You already have some liquid from rehydrating those dried mushrooms and it has more umami, so gently add it making sure to not pour in the grit from the mushrooms. Add your beef to the pot as well as any juices that are in the bowl where you were holding it. Now add a tablespoon of soy sauce (more umami!) and a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce (more umami yet again!). Now, add some chopped canned tomatoes (Yep. Umami!). I prefer the Pomi brand from Italy. They’re already chopped, they come in a cool box like milk did when you were in grade school and they do not use calcium chloride in processing the tomatoes so they fall apart in the stew. You want the tomatoes to be a back note in the stew and not up front, but use whatever tomatoes you have. Just make sure they’re chopped up pretty fine. Now, add a cup of (umami-laden) red wine (I like cooking with Syrah because it’s not overly oaked if you’re buying cheap enough wine), 2-3 cups of beef broth (I usually use canned) and the carrots, tomatoes, potatoes as well as a quarter cup of chopped parsley and a the chopped leaves of two sprigs of rosemary and four sprigs of chopped thyme. Toss in a couple of bay leaves. Stir everything and taste the broth. Bear in mind that these flavors will become more concentrated as everything cooks. Maybe you need to add some salt & pepper. Maybe you want a little more wine or broth because the stew seems too thin. How should I know? Add what you think it needs

Rule #4: Secret Ingredients Rule.

Cooks everywhere have little things they add to their dishes. I will share two of my favorites to add to beef stew. The first is vegemite (also available under the brand name Marmite). Vegemite is loaded with umami. It’s very salty and you don’t need to add a lot. In fact, to me, vegemite seems a little funky on the back of my palate when eaten straight. But if you take a fat teaspoon of vegemite out of the jar and dissolve it in your stew, you will be adding a huge flavor wallop.

Second secret ingredient: preserved lemon. I have fallen in love with the exotic flavor of preserved lemon. I can’t explain why I love it as much as I do but I always have a jar of them around that I made following Mario Batali’s ridiculously simple recipe (easily Googled, I'll bet). Take two quarters of a preserved lemon and chop them into a paste. Stir that into your pot. Trust me on this ingredient. No one will place it (unless they have a ridiculously good palate like my wife), but it will set your stew apart from every other beef stew on the planet save the one I will be making this weekend.

By the way, you should endeavor to come up with your own secret ingredient.

OK, almost done. Taste your dish again and again as you make it. By now you will have a good idea what you want it to taste like. Adjust the seasoning again.

Rule #5: Don’t cook this with direct heat.

If you cook this stew on your stove over direct heat, you will regret it. It will scorch, it will burn. You will be sad. You can’t ever get the heat low enough to avoid burning and still have high enough heat to gently break down the fibers of that tough cut of meat. So put it in the oven. What you’re doing here is braising the meat anyway and the meat doesn’t care if it’s bubbling away on the stove or surrounded by gentler heat in the oven. I set my oven for 250 at the most and let it cook for at least three hours, but you might be able to go to 275 if you’re in a hurry. But if you have more time, 225 will make you happier in four hours, I’ll bet.

Rule #6 Thicken Judiciously.

A beef stew should be thick but not pasty. Given the loosey-goosey parameters I’ve set forth here, I have no idea exactly how much thickener you will need. So I make a roux with equal parts butter and flour and when it’s time for dinner I slowly add enough roux to get the stew where I like it. I find this is easier than adding flour at the beginning and then trying to thin it at the end or, worse, trying to thicken an already cooked stew. I freeze my leftover roux by the tablespoon and always have plenty available.

Rule #7: Eat Well.

I know I’ve dropped a lot of words on you here and if you’ve made it to the end, thank you. But my point in doing so is not to intimidate. Ignore my prolixity because a good beef stew is truly a heart-warming dish made to be shared with your family and a bottle of cotes-du-Rhone. Oh yeah, stir in some frozen peas while the dish is still very hot and then serve.