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I really love black pepper, and for some time now I've wanted to make a stew with a very strong black pepper flavor. Also my girlfriend has been asking me to make a batch of something she can eat after work. So here's how I did it. Ingredients • 3 lb bottom round • 2 onions • 4 cloves garlic • very heaping tablespoon black pepper • 750 ml inexpensive Spanish red wine • salt and flour for dredging the beef     To start off I diced the onions and sliced the garlic. I didn't want an overwhelming garlic flavor, just a bit. Then I trimmed the fat off the beef and set it to render while I cut the rest into bite-sized chunks. By the time I was done with this the fat had mostly rendered into the pan. I squeezed the chunks with my wooden spoon to get a bit more out of it.     I dredged the meat in a bit of flour and salt (not pictured) and then set to browning. I did smaller batches at first, and then the batches got larger as I got impatient to be past the browning part of the process. While things were browning I measured out and ground my pepper (sidenote: that molcajete is my favorite kitchen tool). The browning process left an excellent fond. When I tossed in the onions and garlic I also added just a touch of water and scraped all the fond up into it.     Once the onions had cooked down a bit (I threw a fair amount of salt on them during the process) I poured in the wine, added the ground pepper, then tossed the beef back in. Then it was time to simmer. The sauce became quite thick quite quickly from all the flour on the beef, which is what I wanted. However it kept sticking to the bottom of the pot and threatening to get burnt if I didn't scrape it up every 10 minutes. My solution was to toss the whole pot in the oven at 250 F. This let it get the beef cooked nice and tender, but without a concentrated heat source that would burn the sauce. It worked a treat, and a couple hours later we were in business.  I served the stew with some nice bread on my ridiculously blue table. The pepper flavor is subtle at first, but it finishes nice and spicy. The wine brought just enough acidity to balance everything. It's really quite good. Perfect cold weather food. Now if only the weather would get cold.
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Oct 15, 2015 07:15
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 00:04 |
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That looks delicious. I always worry about what pots and pans are oven-safe. Most of mine are hand-me-downs so it's not like I have packaging that tells me. I would have shied away from putting a glass lid in the oven but I guess that's not necessarily a problem! The only ones I've done it with are a cast iron skillet and an enameled cast iron dutch oven.
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Oct 15, 2015 10:58
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Kenning posted:Perfect cold weather food. Now if only the weather would get cold. Amen to that. Your stew looks incredible and I want some right now.
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Oct 15, 2015 16:18
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Thanks man!guppy posted:That looks delicious. It's not a glass lid, that's a full stainless steel pot. Dutch oven is the classic stew-in-oven choice though.
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Oct 15, 2015 18:55
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There is a similar recipe by jamie oliver I found once however it contains no onions and has 20 cloves of garlic instead. Its a really great stew that is very peppery
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Oct 15, 2015 23:58
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I just improvised this but I'm glad me and Jaime Oliver have similar ideas about stew.
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Oct 16, 2015 04:53
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A good post.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:25
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 00:04 |
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That molcajete is boss. Good looking stew, and bottom round is really the best stew meat.
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Oct 20, 2015 05:01
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