Yesterday, while talking to my Mom on the phone, she mentioned she needed to get a roast. My taste buds kicked in high gear and I remembered how awesome my Mom’s pot roast tastes. All day I was craving pot roast! This morning I decided to do beef stew instead of pot roast, which has basically the same flavor, just the meat is cubes instead of one large cut.
Sometimes I don’t mind taking the time to do the whole thing from scratch, and sometimes I’d rather take the simpler (somewhat) route. Today is one of those days. 🙂 So here’s my easier version of beef stew.
Ingredients:
1 pkg stew beef
2 pkgs French’s Brown Gravy mix
2 cups cold water
2 cups beef broth
14 medium carrots
8 medium potatoes
Place stew beef in a 5 qt crock pot.
Mix both packages of brown gravy mix in 2 cups cold water. Pour over beef.
Add 2 cups beef broth to crock pot.
Using a vegetable peeler, remove the outer skin from the carrots. Cut off both ends of the carrots.
Cut the carrots into large chunks, then add to crock pot.
Peel the potatoes with a paring knife. I use a paring knife rather than a vegetable peeler so I can easily remove any bad spots from the potatoes.
Cut each potato in half and then in half again. If a potato is particularly large you may need to quarter it again.
Add the potatoes to the crock pot. Sprinkle with pepper (don’t add salt as there is sodium in the gravy mix as well as the beef broth).
Here you can add onions if you’d like. Onions aren’t my stomach’s best friend, so I often leave them out.
Cover and turn the crock pot temperature to high. Cook about 8 hours. Serve with some crusty french bread.
A side note – don’t be afraid to put your carrot and potato peels through the garbage disposal. It helps keep the gunk cleaned off the blades!
Rolling in the Dough 