beef-stew_ready-to-eat

Since seeing the movie Julie & Julia, and just poking around the blogosphere the past few weeks, I have seen a lot about Beef Bourguignon. All of which I like. I have never made Beef Bourguignon, and so I wanted to give it a shot with the rest of my blogging buddies. Unfortunately at the 11th hour I realized that I didn’t have bacon, or pearl onions, or Burgandy wine. Although I thought I was clever and had that part covered, I was even going to call this post Leftover Beef Zinfandel to be cute – cause I was using leftover (surprise, surprise!) veggies in my recipe! And Zinfandel instead of Burgundy. But much to my dismay and missing key ingredients, not even that was going to fly. So I turned my defeat around, and instead decided to make a fabulous leftover beef stew.

beef-stew_pop-overs-out-from-the-oven

Now the popovers are a whole other good story. My mom was visiting and we were going to a kitchen outlet so I could finally purchase a Cuisinart stick (immersion) blender. How I survived this long without one, will likely never be fully understood. However, she was also thinking about purchasing a popover pan. She said popovers go really well with Beef Bourguignon (at this stage, I thought I was going to be making my cutesy Beef Zinfandel). But instead I swayed her to get a cast iron skillet.

Later back at my house, I was opening up my new baby (the stick blender) and noticed it came with a recipe book. In the recipe book was a recipe for POPOVERS! So it was a sign that we needed to make popovers to accompany this meal. Not only that, but this recipe said to make them in muffin pans! Which we had! Hooray! Something was finally going my way!

Back to the stew. I have been loving my crock pot recently, and have been using it as a receptacle for every leftover, adding broth and calling it stew. So I thought about using it to make this stew. But I felt that this needed to be special, and I really love how nice and browned everything gets in the tagine.

So I opted to use that.

beef-stew_in-the-tagine


I still browned the cubes of meat before putting them in the tagine – so that was my little nod to Beef Bourguignon!

beef-stew_cooking


As the stew was cooking away in the tagine the popovers were being made. And you know what? The combination was indeed fantastic! Yes, I still want to make Beef Bourguignon, and I am sure I will, but a dolled up beef stew with leftover roasted veggies, and popovers is pretty darned tasty!


Leftover Beef Stew

beef-stew_cooked-to-perfection

INGREDIENTS:

2 cup grass fed beef cubes

flour

olive oil

8 oz. Portobella mushrooms, chopped

6 carrots, peeled and chopped

½ large white onion, chopped

¾ cup of homemade chicken stock

¾ cup red zinfandel( I used Ravenswood)

1 TBS each of fresh thyme and rosemary

3-4 cups of leftover roasted veggies (carrots, turnips, potatoes, green beans, etc) – if you don’t have leftover veggies, that is OK, you can just as easily add raw veggies to your pot, trust me, they will cook up just fine!

beef-stew_cooking-beef-in-pan

METHOD:

This recipe can be made in a stew pan, stovetop or a tagine or dutch oven in the oven. Preheat oven to 400F. Dust beef chunks with flour and brown in a pan until caramelized on the outside. Remove from pan and set aside. Add mushrooms to the pan, and stir around until all the juices from the beef have been sucked up by the mushrooms. Drizzle bottom of cooking vessel with olive oil. Add the beef, and mushrooms. Add the stock and wine, and fresh herbs. Let sit for about 5 minutes. Then add the other veggies. Cook in a 400 F oven for about 2 hours. Let sit with lid on for about 30 minutes out of the oven before serving.

Popovers

(From Cuisinart Stick Blender Recipe Book)

beef-stew_pop-overs-out-from-the-oven1

INGREDIENTS:

¾ cup of unbleached all purpose flour

¾ cup of milk (I used goats milk – that is what we had)

2 large eggs

1 TBS melted butter

½ tsp salt

butter for greasing muffin pans

METHOD:

Place ingredients in the mixing beaker (you can use a bowl). Place the stick blender in the mixing beaker (you could use and hand blender and a bowl). Blend using a gentle up and down motion, until batter is blended and completely homogeous, smooth and creamy. Cover batter and let rest for 30-40 minutes.

Preheat oven to 450 F. Grease 6 muffin cups (½ cup size) and then divide batter evenly among the prepared cups (mine filled each cup to the top). Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Do not peek or disturb, or the popovers might fall. Lower the heat (without opening the oven) to 375 F for another 20 minutes. Remove the pans and remove popovers from the pans and prick with a fork to allow steam to escape and prevent them from becoming soggy. Serve immediately.