BEEF AND BEANS STEW

Beef and Beans is a main course in a bowl

This stew/soup, has everything going for it. With beef, pinto beans, mushrooms and spinach, our beef and beans stew is packed with protein, fiber and plenty of vitamins and minerals. All that good stuff also makes this meal hearty and satisfying. No one will walk away from the dinner table hungry when you serve this for dinner.

A staple world wide

Dried beans have been a staple in cooking all over the world for eons. They can be stored for extended periods of time, so cooks are able to have a protein source on hand even without refrigeration. That is one of the many reasons beans are still used universally throughout the world. Dried beans are generally mild in flavor and there are countless varieties to choose from so there are limitless ways to incorporate them into a recipe.

Beans are back

Using dried beans as part of the main course seems to be making a come back in recent years. During the last half century, the most popular beans being served on a regular basis were baked beans from a can, at least for the people I know. But in the last 15 or 20 years things have changed dramatically. I would credit the comeback in popularity to the trend toward healthier eating and the need of many to stretch their meal budget. Dried beans top the charts on both counts.

Our bean dishes are very popular. We have a classic Italian PASTA FAGIOLI and LENTILS WITH PASTA. As well as an easy version of a classic SPLIT PEA SOUP.

Putting beef in it’s place

Beef comes first in the name of this recipe, but not in importance to the dish. Many cultures use meat to help flavor a recipe, rather than have it as a featured ingredient. If you want to use less beef, by all means do so. While we have used a hearty amount of beef in this recipe, we could have easily gotten the flavor we wanted with a lot less of it.

Get more beef flavor, make a fond

The fond is the brown crust that builds up at the bottom of a pan when you sauté ingredients in a hot pan. Building a fond to enhance flavor is a classic technique in cooking. It sound fancy, but that is far from the truth and we are going to show you just how easy it is.

Making a meal using dried beans

Dried beans take quite a bit of time to cook, especially if you have not soaked them in advance as many people do. We try to keep things simple. The bean recipes we make work out great without the soak.

Besides, who wants to rush a soup or stew cooking on the stove. I love the home sweet home feeling I get from a simmering pot on the stove with all it’s yummy aroma wafting in the air?

Here’s what YOU WILL NEED:

About the ingredients

Beef

When shopping to make this batch of beef and beans, I found a bottom of the round roast on sale and cut it into pieces myself. Often times the stew beef that is pre-cut is not cut in the size I want and it’s usually vastly overpriced.

Cutting my sale priced roast into bite sized pieces was a cinch. Make a few slices about an inch thick and then cut the slices into cubes. You can remove any fat or gristle and get uniform sized pieces to your liking. Saving money for a higher quality ingredient is a win, win in my book.

In this recipe, like any other beef soup or stew, the tougher cuts of beef are best. The tougher cuts will be chuck, bottom of the round, even top of the round will work. Stay away from more tender cuts like eye of the round or sirloin. The more tender cuts loose flavor with extensive cook times.

Beans

We are using pinto beans for our stew, but you can use any dried bean that you like. Ricky almost always uses navy beans but I like to shake it up a bit. I have not tried kidney beans in this recipe yet, but I bet they would be great. We do not soak our beans in advance. We use dried beans right out of the bag after rinsing them and checking to see if any foreign materials have found their way into the bag while processing.

Herbs

We are using oregano and thyme for our stew (my own homegrown). Both are really good in beef dishes. We are also using bay leaves.

Bay leaves come in all sizes. My bay leaves were on the smaller side so I used 4 in this batch. They are not strong enough in flavor so that you should worry about adding exactly the right amount of leaves. If they are large, only use a couple. When you are buying bay leaves look into the bottle or bag to see if a bunch of leaves are already in pieces. A bunch of broken pieces are almost useless to you. Bay leaves do not get soft when they are cooked. They need to be removed before serving. Small chips of leaves are going to be almost impossible to find and remove. Stick with using whole leaves or very large pieces in a recipe you are not going to strain before serving, such as this one.

Onion

We are using yellow onion. The flavor is stronger than most other onions. In general, yellow onions can hold up to longer cook times and the flavor is not as easily lost when cooked with lot of other competing flavors.

Spinach

We are using spinach in our stew. If you have another leafy green that you like to use in soups and stews, go for it. This is another personal preference ingredient. We are adding our baby leaf spinach near the end of the cooking time because it takes so little time to cook. If you are cooking with a sturdier leafy green, it may need more time to cook.

You don’t need to be fussy about how much spinach you are adding. It melts down when cooked. I used one of the regular sized clear hard plastic containers of spinach. They are commonly referred to as clamshell containers. The top is attached to the bottom at one end and and the container opens from the middle. I am guessing that is where the name comes from. I used small leaf spinach so I did not have to cut it before adding it to my stew.

Mushrooms

We are using white button mushrooms in our stew. You can use another type of mushroom if you want.

I buy my mushrooms whole and cut them myself for this recipe. You can use pre-sliced mushrooms if you want. Mushrooms shrink quite a bit when cooked and I like larger chunks in this stew. That’s why I prefer starting with whole mushrooms.

Slurry

We are going to make a slurry to add just before the stew is done. The slurry will thicken the broth into a thin gravy. It is made with soy sauce and cornstarch. The soy sauce will add a deep salty flavor to the stew. The cornstarch in the slurry does the thickening. If you would prefer serving this recipe as a soup rather than a stew, omit the cornstarch but definitely add the soy sauce.

This is WHAT TO DO:

Preparing the ingredients

Cutting and trimming the beef

I have some fat on my roast which I am going to trim off and cut into slices. We are going to use those slices of fat to make a fond. The brown bits that stick to the bottom of the pan when you sauté meat at a high temperature is called a fond. The fond is a flavor goldmine.

If you have chosen to buy a roast cut it into large bite sized cubes. Cut inch wide slices from the roast and then cut the slices into cubes. The meat is going to shrink during cooking, so larger chunks of beef will allow for shrinkage and leave you with pretty good sized pieces in the stew. I cut mine in one inch cubes.

Cut the rest of the ingredients if necessary

Chop the onion, garlic and if you bought whole mushrooms, cut them up too.

We are ready to start cooking

Maximizing the beef flavor

By quickly sautéing the fat I trimmed off the roast I will be “rendering” beef fat as a base of my soup. Basically rendering is the process of melting meat fat for more flavor. Rendered bacon fat is often used to add flavor a dish. And many Italian gravies start with rendered salt pork.

But, the rendered meat fat is not the star of the show when it comes to adding flavor to our beef and beans stew. Rendering the beef fat is also going to create a light crust of braised beef on the bottom of the pan. The brown crust that forms on the bottom of the pan is referred to as the fond. The fond is a powerhouse of flavor.

If you purchased stew beef that was already cut, you can create a fond using a couple of pieces in the pan instead of sliced fat we are using. In either case, we are going to remove them after they have browned.

Let’s make that fond

Use a large pan, commonly called a Dutch oven or a stockpot.

Warm the pan up on medium high heat. Add 1/4 cup of olive oil to the pan and let the oil heat up. Then put the beef fat (or small pieces of stew beef) in the pan and let it brown. Stay at the stove and move the beef around in the pan. It’s okay if it sticks but you want to keep it from burning. There may be flecks of black before you are done, and that’s okay. But most of the fond should be brown.

Here’s what that looks like

Remove the fat from the pan

After the fat has browned, it has done it’s job. Remove the pieces of fat (or pieces of stew beef) from the pan before the next step.

Sauté the chopped onion and garlic

Staying on medium high heat, add the chopped onion and garlic to the pan with the fond and sauté until the onion is translucent. Do not brown the garlic or onion.

Add herbs

Deglazing the fond

I know for many would be cooks, it is words like fond and deglaze that stops them in their tracks when it comes to cooking their own dinner at home. Hopefully the explanation I give for the process gives you all the technical information you need to perform the function. But if I can introduce you to the more formal culinary word, when you see it in another recipe, you may not be caught off guard and quit right there.

Once you have a fond (the brown coating on the bottom of the pan) you need to incorporate the fond into the recipe. You do that by deglazing. Deglazing is the term used for dissolving the fond into liquid to capture the flavor and disperse it into the dish you are making. You can use any liquid that will complement your recipe to deglaze. In our case, we are just going to use a little of the water we are going to use in the stew to deglaze.

After you have mixed the herbs into the onion and garlic, add a cup or so of water ( part of the 12 cups you are adding) and stir it in. A wooden spoon works best for this step. As you are stirring the water in, scrape at the crust on the bottom of the pan (fond) to dissolve it into the water. It won’t take long. When the brown crust is dissolved, continue with the next step.

Add the water, mushrooms, beef, beans and bay leaf

Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and cover

Bring the stew to a boil and then turn the heat down to simmer. Cover the pan and simmer for about 2 hours. The beef will be fork tender and the beans should be tender also.

Making a slurry

While your stew is simmering make a slurry.

A slurry is used to thicken gravies and stews. We are going to add our slurry at the end of the cook time and mix it into the cooked stew ingredients.

A slurry can be made using either flour or corn starch as a thickening agent. We are using corn starch for this recipe. As a general rule, you need less corn starch than you do flour to get the desired consistency/ viscosity.

Whether you are using flour or corn starch in your slurry, you need to emulsify it before adding it to your stew. You do this to prevent lumps. To make a slurry you add a cold or cool liquid to a jar, then add the corn starch (or flour) and shaking it up. Once shaken if not used right away the corn starch may settle to the bottom. No harm done, just shake it up again before adding.

We are using soy sauce as our liquid and corn starch as our thickening agent.

When to add the slurry and spinach

When your ingredients are cooked, it is time to add the slurry and the spinach.

Turn up the heat to medium high and bring the stew to a boil. This will thicken the slurry and cook the spinach.

Add the slurry slowly and fully incorporate it into the stew. Then add your spinach. I use the small leaf baby spinach which only takes about 10 minutes to cook. Other greens may take longer.

Continue to stir the stew as it is thickening and the spinach is cooking. Make sure the slurry doesn’t sink to the bottom and stay there.

The spinach is going to shrink up quickly when added to the hot stew. When the spinach is done, your stew is ready to serve.

Note: If you want the gravy in the stew to be thicker, make another slurry of 1/2 cup water and 2 tablespoons cornstarch, add it and stir for another 5- 10 minutes before serving.

Serve