This beef stew with tomato sauce is a traditional twist on an old favourite recipe. You are going to start with our basic; which is onions, carrots and celery and you are going to sauté those to get them brown nice and flavourful and caramelizing them. Thorough chop celery for about ½ inch thick works well. The beef stew is kind of rustic so you do not want it to uniform, so take your onions and chop them to about ½ inch thick and do your baby carrots whole but you will have to sauté all of them first in your pan to get them nice and caramelized.
Add in a little olive oil now that the pan is hot and add in your onions and celery that is going to come nice and brown and add just a little bit salt and pepper. Give them a stir and when they already start to caramelize add in your baby carrots and stir and let that brown for about three minutes to just get those onions nice and opaque or translucent. While they brown dice up some garlic to add into that, smash the cloves of garlic down and dice them up.
Roughly cut not too small in uniform to move your knife around and don’t keep it straight so that they are all different size cuts and different shapes then go ahead and add them in and give them a stir and when the font forms at the bottom of the pan it is a good sign because it will add flavour to our beef stew. So next, chop your stew meat in bite pieces so that it is easy to eat when you eat, it is very important that when you cut it you want to cut it across the grain so that the meat is very tender when it cooks.
To the chopped meat add in flour, salt and pepper mix it together to coat the meat evenly to give it a brown nice texture when you add it into your pan. Add a touch more oil to keep it from sticking then add it right into the centre do not worry about the flour because the extra flour is going to help thicken the beef stew. Brown that to get a nice brown texture on your meat combine all these ingredients with the seasoning into a slow cooker to get the beef stew started.
The meat gets nice and brown and moves it aside for a minute to see the font forming. Deglaze the font off the pan to add the rich flavour and a little browning occurring on your meat and that is what you want for flavour. Add in beef stock and if you look closely you will notice the brown font is deglazing from the pan and it is going to release from the pan and form sort of gravy right there and it is going to be the basis of beef stew. Now add it to the stockpot, but first to the pot, add oil and your diced potatoes and add in some seasoning.
Add your rosemary whole and thyme as well because you are going to pick it out later and that way it will add the seasoning but you will not have the herbs or sticks in there. Add in a couple of bay leaves and lastly thyme and then beef stocks and to that add our beef and our vegetables. You can see that kind of brown gravy that is going to add flavour in there. You can see the caramelized onions in there and the sweetness of the onions will add the onion flavour. Add in the tomato sauce to give this traditional dish a new flair and mix it in to give a nice rich deep red colour and a lot of flavour to our beef stew.
Let that cook for about 4 to 6 hours and serve it up with some hearty bread maybe some noodles. When it is finished go ahead and plate it up. It is a great dish on one of those cold fall days with that rich tomato flavour and finishes it with fresh parsley. Serve with white rice and enjoy.
