Slow Cooker Beef Stew So Easy Anyone Can Do It!

Chef Kate here and I'm showing you today a slow cooker beef stew. Our old-fashioned beef stew is a fan favorite. Everyone loves that recipe but they ask how can I do that in a slow cooker and I've got that figured out for you. I love the slow cooker because it can do all the work for me. To start off our recipe we're going to be using two pounds of beef stew meat. We're going to season that with about two tablespoons of cornstarch. Now beef stew meat can be found in the grocery store but if you don't have it you can get a beef chuck roast and simply cube it up into bite-sized morsels. We're putting the cornstarch on there because we're going to give it a little bit of a crust on the exterior. It gives it a great texture. Then we season up that beef with one teaspoon of salt and a fourth a teaspoon of black pepper and give that a toss to make sure it all gets some of that coating. And now we're going to brown this beef so let's head over to the stove. In a large pot over medium-high heat I'm going to add in two tablespoons of cooking oil. Once that oil is hot we're going to add in the beef. We're going to let that cook for about five minutes and stir it around as it cooks to ensure that there's browning on all sides of it. Once again I always talk about browning because it is flavor and I'm all about flavor. You also don't want to crowd the pan so if you need to work in batches be sure to do that. As the beef is cooking I'm gonna cube up about a pound and a half of red potatoes. You can buy them really small or you can get a larger size and cut them up. You just want them to be bite-sized. To our browned beef I'm gonna add in two cloves of minced garlic and then I'm gonna use about two tablespoons of tomato paste. Stir that all together and let that cook alongside the beef for another one to two minutes. You're gonna really smell that fragrant garlic and it's it smells so good. After we've toasted the tomato paste and the garlic we're going to pour in four cups of beef broth so we can deglaze that pan so we leave no flavor behind. In addition to the beef broth we're going to add in a fourth a cup of Worcestershire sauce. Say it how you want to. That addition brings on such a good beefy flavor. I highly recommend it. When you cook the beef in the pan it's going to leave behind this residue so that addition of the beef broth and Worcestershire is going to help pull that off the pan. Once you feel like you've loosened up all of those pieces go ahead and cut the heat and then we're going to transfer this to the slow cooker. To that slow cooker add in the beef mixture. Be careful how you do that. Then we're going to add in our diced potatoes, our pearl onions, which these are unique and sometimes you can't find them so feel free to chop up a white onion. We're going to add in our pearl onions, cubed carrots, and some celery. The variety of vegetables give such a variety of textures and flavors when this is all finished cooking. Then to those vegetables we're going to add in a teaspoon of sugar and it's like why would you add sugar to it? I promise it brings balance and harmony to this stew. Half a teaspoon of dried basil, half a teaspoon of oregano, and a half a teaspoon of parsley. Then I'm going to sprinkle in a half a teaspoon of paprika and a unique spice here. We're going a fourth a teaspoon of allspice. Give that a stir to make sure everything is well blended and then we're going to simply pop the lid on it. Let it do all the work for the next six to eight hours on low or four to six hours on high. Our beef stew has been cooking for about six hours and we need to thicken up that sauce a little bit. So I'm going to take a fourth a cup of water and add in two tablespoons of cornstarch. Making a cornstarch slurry, mix that together until it is no longer lumpy. Then drizzle in that cornstarch slurry into the slow cooker. Give it a mix then pop the lid back on that for another 30 minutes. This stew has been cooking for about seven hours and it smells like heaven. The vegetables are fork tender. You can find this recipe in the video description below. Make sure to check that out and head over to our website where you can find hundreds of restaurant quality recipes that you can easily make at home.