Slow Cooker Beef Stew: With dumplings, carrots and green beans
This slow cooker beef stew recipe is unusual in that I've included sweet potatoes. Putting the sweet potatoes in for the full eight hours makes them become part of the gravy, useful with difficult kids and giving a delicate flavour.
If you like your sweet potatoes firmer, put them in for the last four or five hours
The nice thing about stews is that you can put into them pretty much whatever you have available in the root vegetable department so don't be afraid to experiment.
Other possible additions or substitutions for slow cooker beef stew are parsnip, swede, turnip, tomato, red or green peppers, butternut squash, jerusalem artichokes and lemon.
Serves:
Four portions
Preparation time:
30 minutes
Ingredients for this Slow Cooker Beef Stew Recipe
Four medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
Four sweet potatoes (yams), peeled and sliced
Two pounds (1kg) stewing steak
Beef stock, enough to almost cover the ingredients
A chopped onion
Three or four chopped sticks of celery
Dried mixed herbs
Two bay leaves
Glass of red wine (for the stew)
Cooking Method: Slow Cooker Beef Stew
Place the cubed potatoes and any other root vegetables in the bottom of the slow cooker.
Add the sweet potatoes, onion and celery.
Add the beef. You can coat the beef in flour and brown it in the frying pan first. I don't find it makes any difference to a stew.
Add the wine, herbs, bay leaves.
Add stock until the liquid is visible.
Cook for eight hours on low.
Ingredients for Dumplings
50 gm. (2 oz.) beef suet, butter or margarine
100 gm. (4 oz.) self raising flour
Dried mixed herbs, (optional)
Making Dumplings in a Slow Cooker
The rule for dumplings is one part fat to two parts self raising flour by weight.
Combine the fat and the flour by rubbing the fat into the flour with your fingers in a mixing bowl. Add dried herbs to the flour before combining if you like.
When you get to a texture a bit like breadcrumbs, carefully add a little water at a time until you get a dough. Too much water will make the dumplings heavy.
Dip fingers into fresh flour to stop the dough sticking to them, and roll into balls.
Place the dumplings on top of the stew for the last hour of cooking. Don't push them down into the stew.
Do You Have a Favourite Recipe for This?
Do you have a favourite slow cooker recipe for this? Would you like to share it?