Slow Cooker Beef Stew Recipe - Plain Chicken (2024)

FAQs

Should stew be covered with liquid in slow cooker? ›

Because your slow cooker will have a tightly sealed lid, the liquid won't evaporate so if you're adapting a standard recipe, it's best to reduce the liquid by roughly a third. It should just cover the meat and vegetables.

Chicken stock is fantastic because it's essentially a blank sauce, stew, or soup canvas. It picks up and enhances other flavors so well. Bolstered with the sautéed vegetables, browned beef, and aromatics, even chicken stock winds up with great, natural beef flavor.

The most important key to making stew meat tender is being sure to cook it for a long time. If you want super tender beef, you'll need to cook it on a low heat in a Dutch oven on the stove or a slow cooker for at least a few hours.

Water or store-bought broth will do just fine in a pinch, but really flavorful stew recipes start with homemade broth. Making it yourself lets you control the sodium level and flavor.

Browning Is Better

And if you dredge the meat in flour before you brown it, your sauce will thicken up to make a gravy. You should always brown ground beef or any ground meat in a skillet before adding it to your slow cooker to prevent the meat from clumping up or from adding excess grease to your cooked dish.

Stew is basically meat braised in liquid, along with other ingredients—typically potatoes, carrots, onions, and possibly some sort of tomato. The tomato can be tomato paste, diced tomatoes, or even whole canned tomatoes that you break up with a spoon while it cooks. But no one said that the main liquid should be water.

Do you need tomato paste for beef stew? We recommend using tomato paste for this recipe. Tomato paste adds crucial flavor and body to the stew meat when cooked with herbs, garlic and wine.

The secret to tender and flavorful potatoes in your stew lies in low and slow cooking. Here's how you can achieve the best results: Add the potatoes to the stew during the last hour of cooking. This timing will prevent them from becoming mushy.

“Beef may be tough in the slow cooker if you haven't added enough liquid, or haven't cooked it for long enough,” Kristen Carli, M.S., R.D., owner of Camelback Nutrition & Wellness, tells SELF. “For cuts of meat, the fattier cuts are often the ones that get juicy and tender.

This gives your stew a creamier body, particular if you're using starchy vegetables like potatoes. Starches are an excellent way to thicken up your stew, as individual starch molecules start to absorb water immediately upon hitting hot liquid, eventually bursting and causing the liquid to thicken.

Can you cook beef stew too long in slow cooker? ›

You could, but it probably wouldn't be good. You want to cook stew meat long enough for the meat to become tender, but even when immersed in liquid, if it cooks too long it basically just loses all its texture and disintegrates.

Should liquid cover the meat in a slow cooker? There is no need to cover the meat in liquid when cooking with a slow cooker, you only need enough liquid to cover the base of the slow cooker as the meat and vegetables will release liquid as they cook.

A slow cooker does not need any liquid added at the beginning of the cooking process, because it will generate steam, which will become liquid in the bowl. For recipes that use liquid, and have not been written specifically for a slow cooker it make sense to reduce the amount of liquid by half.

For stews that will be simmered on the stove or in the oven, you'll want enough liquid to cover the ingredients in the pot by about an inch. If preparing in a slow-cooker or multi-cooker, you can add less liquid since the tight seal on the lid reduces evaporation.

If the stew tastes thin to you, leave the lid off for the last half hour of cooking so some of the liquid can evaporate and concentrate the flavors. Conversely, add a cup of water if it seems to concentrated. 6. The Finish – If you like, you can thicken the stew at the very end of cooking.