The Best Cowboy Beef Stew You'll Ever Make (2 Secret Ingredients)

Folks, one of the secret ingredients I told you if you're gonna make stew and you're gonna get it right, there's two things. We're talking about quality beef stew. First thing on my mind is, I wanna save some money with the way beef prices and everything is at the grocery store. So I'm gonna tell you something. A lot of times I go to Sam's or I go to Costco, they'll have three maybe four roasts in a package or even two. You can save a lot of money by buying them. You can freeze them, put them in a vacuum seal, whatever. But also look for a good cut of meat. I love to use a chuck roast when I'm making stew. Now I know some of you are saying, I went to the grocery store and they had stew meat in And I can just go ahead and buy it. Folks, them is just trimmings that's left over from stuff that you don't know where it come from. Buy quality, buy goodness, get you some fat, get you some marbling. You're fixing to make the best stew you ever made in your life, and it all starts right here with beef. Now, when I'm going for most flavor, I'm always going to lean towards the chuck roast. But we've got some fat over here I'd like to sort of get rid of, so we're just going to do a little trimming. I'm not going to get every piece of fat off of it because as that fat cooks we're going to have some goodness but you can see where these lines are coming across through here that's where I like to try to separate that muscle that way we're not biting so really so much against coarse meat so we'll get it all sort of separated here and we're going to cut this into bite-sized pieces all these trimmings cut that fat really goodness of beef we save them for pup scraps okay duker There you go. Little bitty fella, I'm trying to find you a pretty lean piece. There you go. Thank you. Lulu, where you at? Hiding under the wagon. You're supposed to be on a diet. I don't really think you need that. Now I'm going to use our low sodium seasoning. I'm really high on it and people even tell me I like it better. But I've got me some flour here, all purpose. We are going to season well right in here. Toss it about like you would a salad. Now if you ain't got this, you can use regular salt, pepper, little garlic powder, whatever your favorite seasoning is. I hope it's this. Now one thing about it, when this gets put together, we will taste and if we need to adjust, we sure can. But I can see some seasoning on everybody, so now we're going to dredge it in the flour. Now we're going to dredge it in the flour, get it separated. I'll meet y'all over at Bertha and some hot oil in a pot. Now, you could just be chunking them over in that bowl, get them ready to go over, but then we get too much flour. Too much flour in the skillet is going to burn the flour. So, give them a little shake. You got something, a sifter, whatever you got, get that loose flour off of them, dump them in there. Remember when I told you I'd meet you over at the hot oil? It's not just hot oil, it's baking grease. You got to have something going to bring some flavor in there. And don't overcrowd the pot in here when you got it in And look what we're using. We are using our... Enameled piece of cast iron. I know a lot of y'all got them and a lot of y'all ask me questions about them. Do you use yours a lot? Do you have to season it? There's no seasoning taking place here on this enamel on the inside. Just clean it good. Make sure you dry it over heat. You're good to go. Just like a piece of cast iron. But they're great for stews. You can put them in the oven. You can cook over open fire with them. So we're just going to sear these probably three to four minutes. So we get that really good color. We're not looking to cook them plumb through done because that's gonna finish up in the pot itself when we go to get the stew. So three to four minutes, stir them occasionally. Make sure all sides is browned up. Then we'll do on another batch. Here I got a secret I'll show you. Look here, see all these good scraps that's left here on the bottom? Leave them in there. Just scrape them to where they're sort of loose. Still got some of that bacon grease in there. Next. Some garlic cloves and this always goes in at the last. If you're too hot let your vessel cool off a little because we do not want to burn any garlic. Just take it for just a second just to roast it. You can see how quick this happens but it is soaking up some of that good meat love down in there. I can smell that. It does smell good. Garlic is roasted toasted and done. Back in goes the meat. Any drippings and juice that might be left in there, let it go with it. It deserves it. Bertha was burning what remaining hair I had off my legs over there, so I moved back over to the chuck box. Had to put me some bumpers on there because you just set something hot directly on this galvanized metal, it'll pop. So, beef broth. Give it a little squeeze. Stewed tomatoes. Because when they cook some more, the time you stir it around, they sort of chop up a little. But you use them diced tomatoes and put them in there, time you get through cooking, you can't find the tomatoes no more. We're using three cans of them. Uh-huh. The W sauce. Me and Justin Wilson know you got to have it in here. You know what it is? It's time. To me, when you're cooking stew, casseroles, beef with got any kind of broth to it or two, there is nothing to me that brings about a more better flavor than time. But what would it be if we didn't add some red wine? Now, this is the way me and Shan like to really do a stew or something like that. Add you some red wine to it, so much flavor that it brings out. The alcohol is going away. We're just getting the flavor that this wine is going to bring. So we're going to add a little splash. I call that pretty good. Give it a good mixing. I can already tell you folks, this here is going to be some fine dining. Great aroma coming out of there. We're going to take this over here to the fire and put it on in a minute. It's going to go about an hour and a half. And you're thinking to yourself, that's all you're going to put in it? No, it's not. Don't quit me now because I have a lot more stuff that's going in there. But we need to get that meat to getting tender and to go ahead and soaking up all this flavor before the rest goes in. I'm going to put it on Bertha, cover it with a lid. We'll check it in about an hour. Now when I told you we was gonna let this cook for a little over an hour, that don't mean you can go over there and take a nap and just sit there. You gotta come back and stir this every once in a while. But I think this would be a really good time for me to tell you about some of the best stew I ever made in some of the coldest weather I was ever in Palo Duro Canyon, 2001. Had about a foot of snow on the ground. We was running low on groceries and when they left after breakfast, I go to digging around in ice chests. Now my ice My ice chest is outside. Snow has drifted up from over the top of them. Get it off there, see what I can find. There is some pork butt in there. There is some roast in there. And we have quite a few veggies left. So I like to combine meat like that when we're getting close to the end of the works too, to get rid of what's in them ice chests. So we just browned it up like we did this process. Them cowboys didn't come in. They had a lot of trouble that day. They didn't come in for lunch until about 2.15. Icicles hanging off old brother Daniel's mustache. I mean, everybody was froze to the core because the wind had got up while they were gone. I bet the wind chill was probably minus 15. Here they all come back in there. Where do they go first? Right here, trying to soak up some of that love that Bertha's got. But I tell them, boys, it's still hot. It's still ready to eat. There was two pans of fresh cornbread there that I'd made, little bacon in them, little jalapenos. I pulled the lid off that big old five-gallon stew pot. And just set it there, put a dipper in it, and I said, eat till it thaws you out. Now, I can remember old brothers standing up there by the stove, and I told them, y'all eat anywhere you want to. Because usually when you're talking about cowboys and eating at a wagon, they're never up here by the stove. They're all sitting around the outside edge, which it flies up, all the walls is up, and it's probably 30 degrees in there, which is a whole lot warmer than they've been. But they just gathered up right here at the back of this stove. An old brother had eaten a bowl full, got another one, he looked over there at me and he said, Kent, I think I'm thawing out because he said there's a mud puddle down here where I'm standing. It's just been dripping. But they had so much snow on them. They had so much stuff that just froze to them. But when they left that day after lunch, I guarantee you they was warmed up, they was fueled up, and they went back to do bovine battle. And when they come back, we had a good supper too. Don't forget, our podcast moved to its own channel, so you can easily find all of those videos. But, if you want to come hang out with us a little more, you have to go subscribe to that channel. It's Cowboy Coffee Hour Podcast. Hit subscribe, and make sure you hit the little ding-a-dong bell, so you don't miss an episode. Remember, every Sunday, 3 p.m. Central, check out the Cowboy Coffee Hour. Well, we've been on about a little over an hour. Things has thickened up in there, as you can see. Meat is getting tender. Them maters has sort of fell apart just a little. Let me see if I can find you one in there where you see it. See what I told you? If them had been them little bitty diced steak maters, we wouldn't have found them. But if we'd have put the potatoes and the carrots in there all at one time when we started that, some of them might have withheld the battle, but some of them would have disintegrated. So in go, and I got some red skins. I love to leave the skin on them. So in they, they're gonna go. Yes, it's gonna be full. Folks, one of the secret ingredients I told you if you're gonna make stew and you're gonna get it right, there's two things. A little red wine and some pearl onions. Why do you like pearl? Because they just stand up and they hold their shape, whereas you cut up an onion and put in there and cook, they sort of fall apart. You can't find them. This just brings about so much more flavor and we may have to add a little more broth. To this, you can use some beef broth. You can cut it with a little water, whatever you got. But we need to get that. It's probably going to cook another 45 minutes to an hour. One bay leaf, two bay leaf, three bay leaf. Why do I put them in at the last? Because when you be stirring them all around, they crumble up. Then you can't find them. Remember your count. That's how many we're going to dig out. We just want to get them covered up in some of that broth and that juice. Let them go back to simmering. I'll add a little more broth to it. I'm just waiting on the goodness for everybody to get tender, and I'm going to have a bowl while y'all watch me eat it. Hey, I've got a very important question to ask you. You've got that bowl of stew. What's going to accompany it? Is it going to be a cracker? Is it going to be cornbread? Is it going to be a biscuit? Today, I'm doing cornbread. Let me know what y'all are going to do. I'm going to tell you right now. I'm going to let that cool a minute because you put that in your mouth right now, it'll burn the hair off your tongue if you got any on there. But I just want you to, I mean, them little pearl onions to me are the thing that just adds so much to it. And the flavor of that wine. It's a pretty dish. It is that for sure. So while we're letting this cool just a minute, there's a bunch in that pot. It's just me and Shan. So I'm going to let it cool completely. Might even put it in the icebox after it does. Let it set overnight. And then I'm going to put it in some of them good freezer bags and I'm going to freeze it because you can bring this stuff back out later and have it. Every time you warm it up, it gets better, I think. So let's see what we can do here. There's a piece of meat and an onion, ooh, and a tomato I was trying to get. The bowl is hot. The thing that hits me right off the bat is that just the flavor of that wine. I think it's sort of a... In a way, a woody, earthy taste that you get out of it. But that little pearl onion cooked in there got so tender. Let's get a carrot and go back for another round. There's another pearl onion in there. Thank y'all so much for joining us. It means the world to me and Shan, it does. But don't forget, that podcast has moved to its own channel, so look it up, be sure you subscribe. I don't want you to miss any episode that comes out on Sunday. But it is with great pride, honor, and privilege that I tip my hat to all the servicemen and women and all the veterans that have kept that old flag a-flying. We lift you up in prayer, and we commend you for what you do. The rest of you, get on up in here for a comfort hug, because we've got comfort food. God bless you each and every one, and I'll see you down the best stew you ever eat in your life trail.