Beef Stew - Finally!

After our first good cool front in Houston, I finally gave in. It was the weekend, I decided, to finally find a recipe and make some stew. Chris snorted when I suggested it but I was determined. It was cold! And now there needed to be a good, hearty bowl of yummy stew with tasty leftovers for warming up with later...

I have to admit, buying packages of "miscellaneous beef" at the store made me laugh. Hesitate a little, but laugh anyway. I'd settled on this recipe - it looked straight forward enough and didn't have an abundance of things we didn't want, like tomatoes or mushrooms or what-have-you.

I started doing this while Chris was napping, leaving that same sweet cornbread recipe for later, towards the end of cooking. It came together pretty easily at first - as suggested, I used beef broth instead of bouillon and switched 1/2 cup of that for 1/2 cup of red wine, and then started cutting up veggies while the meat was stewing. It smelled pretty dang good and I wandered off, already pleased with myself.

I did add a few cloves of minced garlic in with the veggies, but immediately I saw a pretty glaring problem - there wasn't nearly enough liquid. Not even close. But I was out of beef broth (stupidly having poured out the remainder of a can already in an effort to clean as I went along), so I had to resort to water.

As otehrs suggested, I did triple the amount of corn starch I added, but after a few minutes it still wasn't thickening up and I'll admit that I panicked. At this point it was pretty much watery soup, and with the timer ticking down I gave in and added about 1/4 cup flour mixed with an even amount of cool water. To my relief, it finally started thickening, and it still smelled great. Cornbread was prepared and cooked, and everything looked like it was perfect.

Unfortunately, looks aren't everything. The stew wasn't inedible, it just didn't taste like much of anything. Bland, bland, bland... even salt couldn't save it. It tasted very vaguely like herbs and faintly like beef broth, but nothing like the rich, savory stew that I remember my father making when I was a kid, and the liquid was a weird sort of milky-brownish-gray, which makes me think I got carried away with the flour. Maybe it did need what other commenters were suggesting - a tablespoon of A1, Worcestershire sauce and ketchup, something to give the broth some flavor. I'm pretty sure I added oregano and basil to the seasoning, definitely used a dredge of Mrs. Dash and flour before browning the meat, but it was still bland city.

Ah well, you win some and you lose some, I guess.