Friday, October 11, 2013

Chipotle Beef Stew with Root Veggies

It's a been a while since I posted and lots of things have changed for me.  I have joined the working outside the home world.  My first foray into the working world since becoming a parent was at the flailing JCPenney.  After that got tiresome I started applying to positions that interested me much more.  I got hired on at my local co-op.  I love it there.  I work in the education and outreach department mostly behind the scenes for the cooking classes.

I am learning all kinds of things and getting to rub elbows with fantastic cooks and chefs. Ergo I am more inspired to be in the kitchen.

Tuesdays dinner plan that turned into lunch was a goal to use up some things:  an unlabeled roast with little marbling and a nice fat cap,  local peppers, sweet potatoes and some celeriac.

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2lbs roast - I trimmed the fat cap off and cut into cubes
2-3 tbl - local lard
1-2 cups beef broth
1 chipotle in adobe sauce from the freezer - roughly chopped
1 yellow onion cut in to quarters
salt an pepper for the beef

My plan was to pressure cook the beef so it would be tender and juicey for a stew or beef tacos.  I seasoned the beef cubes with salt and pepper and browned them in the pressure cooker in two batches in lard.  Then added them back into the poth with chipolte in adobo sauce and onion the topped the cube off with about 1.5 cups of beef broth cubes that were in the freezer.  Got the pressure cooker to pressure and cooked for 15 minutes and waited for it to cool down naturally.

1 yellow onions  chopped
1 tbl oregano
2 tbl tomato paste
3 peppers both red and green chopped
4 cloves of garlic minced
about 1/2 cup celeriac  chopped medium fine
more beef broth to cover the veggies and beef

When the beef was done I prepared the above veggies.  I pulled out my 6 quart enamel dutch oven and sauteed the onions until mostly translucent then added the garlic and oregano then the rest of the veggies and cooked a bit more.  Then added the tomato paste, beef and most of the pressure cooking liquid.  I over salted the beef and the broth was quit rich so I saved back some of it and put it in the freezer and topped off the stew with more beef broth in the pantry. I brought the stew to a simmer and had it for lunch.

I thought is was pretty good even if a bit salty and had a nice smokey flavor and heat from the chipotle.

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You could top it with some fresh cilantro like I did for leftovers the next day.