I’m so excited about sharing this post today!  If you’ve landed here from Bettye’s blog, Fashionschlub, welcome!  And if you’ve arrived here some other way, welcome to you, too!  This is the third fall in a row that I’ve joined this blog hop hosted by Leslie from Onceuponatimehappilyeverafter!  I’m sharing a tried and true beef stew recipe that I’ve been making for years.

Background

This is really a pretty basic stew recipe.  To me, what makes it special is that it’s our FAVORITE stew recipe, and I’ve been making it since before we even had kids.  It comes from this cookbook that was given to me when I married in 1972:

Because it’s a recipe for two, I’ve always doubled it when making it for more people.  For this blog post, since I was fixing it just for Big Eagle and myself, I made it just as it is in the book.  And may I take a minute here to say that I think a cookbook like this would still make a fantastic wedding gift!  I know we all get so many of our recipes now from online, but I have just loved this book and one other I was given when we married.  That would be this one here:

I no longer have this one.  It fell apart from all the years of use!  But it had some real favorite recipes in it, which I clipped out and saved before I threw it away.  I was surprised to find it still available on Amazon and elsewhere online.  It’s presents the recipes for complete meals, which I always thought was neat.  As I recall, one of the sections near the back of the book was titled “So You’re Back to Two”.  I remember thinking how far away that day would be!  But here we are, and we’ve been “back to two” for a number of years now!

Well, enough rambling…on to the recipe!

 

Ingredients

Here are the ingredients needed:

1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

Dash pepper

3/4 pound beef chuck, cut in 1-inch cubes  (I just buy stew meat.)

1 Tablespoon shortening

1 10 1/2 – oz can condensed tomato soup

1 soup can water (1 1/4 cups)

3/4 cup chopped onion

1/4 teaspoon dried basil, crushed

2 medium potatoes, pared and cubed

2 medium carrots, cut in 1-inch pieces

1/4 cup dry red wine or water

 

Procedure

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Combine the flour, salt, and pepper, and dredge the meat pieces in it.  Then brown in hot shortening.  I use my square 2-quart Corningware for this.  Another wonderful wedding gift!  I LOVE my Corningware!

If I’m doubling the recipe, I use a dutch oven.  But this casserole dish is the perfect size for the 2-person recipe.

Once the pieces are browned, you can remove it from the heat and add the soup, water, onion, and basil.

Now cover it, and bake it in the oven for one hour before adding the final three ingredients.

After it’s been in the oven for an hour, you add the potatoes, carrots, and wine.

 I actually ended up using only one of my potatoes.  The recipe calls for medium potatoes, and I decided mine were pretty big, so one would suffice.  It seems the bulk potatoes in the stores are so huge any more!  Although the recipe says you can use water in place of the wine, I’ve always used the wine.  I think it really adds to the flavor.

This is a wine I had never tried before, but I bought it because first of all, at $9.97, it was in the price range I wanted to spend.  Second, I thought the label was perfect for the Halloween time frame. 🎃 And lastly, when I checked it with my Vivino app, it came up rated with a 3.9 out of 5.  Not bad…not bad at all. 😁

So now the cover goes back on, and it goes back in the oven for one more hour.  That’s it!  Here it is just out of the oven.  It’s super HOT!

I like to serve it with some crusty French bread.  You could have a side salad, as well, but we didn’t.

We hadn’t had this in a few years, actually, and when we ate it that night, both Big Eagle and I were in a very happy place!  I had forgotten how delicious this stew is!  SO GOOD!  Evidently we don’t eat as much as we used to, because we were able to enjoy the stew for dinner the next night, too!

I hope you’ll try this, because it really is yummy and perfect for the cold weather on the way.  Also, I hope you’ll check out the next blogger on this hop, Liz at Closet Play Image, to see what she cooked up!  I’m headed there myself right after I post this!

Hope you have a great rest of the week and a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!