Healthier Slow Cooker Beef Stew Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the healthiest meat for stew? ›

Start with lean cuts of meat - Try London broil, brisket, top round and chuck roast. Add lots of vegetables - More carrots, peas, potatoes, celery, broccoli or even turnips helps bulk up portions while using less meat.

It's full of veggies and protein after all. Although traditional beef stew recipes provide more nutrition than many meals, most still plague you with far too much sodium and calories. Make some easy switches to truly have a healthy beef stew recipe you can be proud to share. Most stews use a beef broth for the base.

For most types of stew, it takes time to develop great flavor. Stew uses collagen-rich, tough cuts of meat, which need at least two hours to break down. If you try to rush it and boil the stew, the muscle fibers will shrink and become tough. So give yourself a few hours to let it do its thing.

For most soups and stews, it is necessary to add liquid in a slow cooker. Liquid helps to transfer heat evenly, preventing food from burning, and also ensures that the ingredients are evenly cooked. In addition, the liquid helps to create a sauce or broth that adds flavor and richness to the dish.

Carrots and other root vegetables, onions, chard, spinach, and lettuce are ideal for stewing while potatoes, leeks, cabbage, and porcini mushrooms are optimal for braising. Browse the photo gallery above for stewing and braising tips for seven different vegetables.

A stew can be a nutritious and well-rounded meal if it contains a variety of vegetables, lean protein, and healthy fats. For example, a vegetable stew with legumes or lean meat as the protein source can provide essential vitamins, minerals, fiber, and protein, while also being low in calories and fat.

I almost always add some beef bouillon crystals to my stew, it helps oomph (yes, a technical term) the beefiness of the stock. Sometimes also use a few shots of worcestershire sauce or soy sauce - both will also add some oomph to the flavor.

If you're talking about a stew made with a variety of vegetables, lean protein like chicken or fish, and whole grains like brown rice or quinoa, then yes, it's definitely possible to eat healthily by just eating stew.

Beef stew, homemade, gravy base with potatoes, with carrots or dark green vegetables (1 cup) contains 16.7g total carbs, 13.9g net carbs, 16.3g fat, 12.9g protein, and 265 calories.

But the liquid itself should not be thick in the same way that gravy is thick. So skip the roux, and don't bother dusting the meat with flour or cornstarch before browning, either, as some recipes will suggest. That will just interfere with getting a good sear on the meat, and gum up the stew with unneeded starch.

What can I add to my beef stew to give it more flavor? ›

There are flavors in tomatoes that are alcohol-soluble, so adding red wine along with tomato paste also helps to enhance beef stew." Laurence has a few other tricks I've borrowed to create the best beef stew, including adding Worcestershire, which gets a serious umami punch from anchovies.

Peas are nice but I wouldn't add them until the last few minutes. Vegetables that work well in a beef stew include Hardroots vegetable, carrots, potatoes, onions, celery, and parsnips. These vegetables add flavor and texture to the stew while complementing the richness of the beef.

Can you overcook something in a slow cooker? Slow cookers are specially designed to cook food for long periods of time, but yes, you can still overcook in a slow cooker if something is left on the wrong setting for longer than it's supposed to be.

Cornstarch, potato starch, and chickpea flour are a couple of pantry-friendly ways to thicken soups, stews, and sauces in the slow cooker. Just a tablespoon or two of any — added towards the end of cooking — will thicken sauces especially well.

When you stew your food, you consume both the meat and the water that the meat was cooked in, so you aren't losing any of the nutrients. You can also add vegetables and other items to the stew, so these nutrients are locked in as well, making the stew even healthier.

What Cut of Beef Is Stew Meat? Stew meat is made from cuts of beef with lots of tough connective tissue, namely chuck and/or round. When you simmer it in a liquid, the connective tissue breaks down and becomes melt-in-your-mouth tender.