Freezer beef stew in a bag
I love beef stew, but don’t always feel like making it from scratch. Actually, more often than not, beef stew ends up being the result of me making a roast with potatoes, and the following day, if there are any leftovers (there usually aren’t), then I’ll toss them in a pan, add some gravy and broth, and maybe toss in some frozen veggies.
For Christmas, though, I had a friend of the family on my gift list who always buys whatever he wants and would be upset if we bought him anything anyway. He’s not in the best of health, though, and one of the main reasons is that he doesn’t cook any more and has no one to cook for him, so he eats out. A lot.
When my mom saw him starting to make some efforts in the right direction, though, she had a brilliant idea and asked me to execute it. She wanted a freezer basket full of several homemade, slightly healthier versions of foods he already enjoys, that he could just heat up at home whenever.
“Beef stew in a bag” or “freezer beef stew” is something that I’d wanted to do for myself anyway and hadn’t gotten around to, so it was one of the first things I was sure to add to my list.
That’s the original picture I saw associated with the recipe on Once A Month Mom. It’s Real Mom Kithen’s post on her site that has the instructions and quantities, so after a bit of searching, I finally found it (yay for moving sites and redirecting….boo for all the links being broken, though).
Check out this link for the original. I didn’t follow it exactly, so here’s the best I can guess is my modified version below. I mostly just eyed it and tossed in more or less veggies, depending on what I had chopped and in front of me. This is definitely best done by chopping everything at once and then splitting amongst bags.
Freezer Beef Stew in a Bag2 small chopped onions
2 cups sliced carrots
2 cups chopped potatoes
1.5 cups chopped green beans (I used frozen in two bags and fresh in another)
1.5 cups diced celery
Whatever other veggies you might like in your stew
2 lbs preferred beef, chopped into large chunks (I had a 7ish lb roast that I split between 3 bags)
3.5 cups beef stock
3 tsp. worcestershire sauce
½ tsp. pepper
¼. tsp. thyme
1 tsp. salt
4 T. flour
1 tsp. garlic
3 tsp. tomato pasteLayer all the meat and veggies into a gallon-size ziploc freezer bag. The prettier, the better, hehe. Squeeze out as much air as possible. Mix spices, broth, and paste into a bowl and taste test before dumping into the bag as well…adjust according to your tastes. Be sure to label your bags with the date and cooking instructions.
To serve, thaw in the fridge overnight and cook in a crockpot on low for 6-8 hours. You can also do it on the stove on low for about 35-40 minutes, according to Real Mom Kitchen. Just cook until the stew is thick and the veggies are cooked thoroughly. If you like your stew thicker, mix a bit of cornstarch and cold water together, then add to the pot and keep simmering.
I considered browning and seasoning the meat first or even including it in a small ziploc bag by itself, included within the large one, so that he (or I, when I pull out mine) could brown it in hot oil before it being tossed in with the rest of the stew. Ultimately, though, it was for convenience’s sake, so it all went into the bag and is ready to all be tossed in a crockpot all day as well. Easy peasy. Except without peas.
Amazing deals make me squeal
No, I’m not going to show you weekly coupons or how I get $800 worth of food for $5 because I’m just that awesome. I *do* get excited over things like this, though:
That’s a $45 piece of meat….for $18…..except I shopped on a day where it was 10% off, so I actually got that for $16.30. At less than $1.99 a pound, that’s a whole sirloin tip for less per pound than I pay for ground beef.
And I just so happened to have been planning a large house warming party for dozens of people, so this couldn’t have showed up at a better time. I turned it into some delicious kabobs that I’ll show you guys more pictures of later.
Six pounds of jalepeno peppers later…..
The girls love jalapeños and spicy foods in general. It’s not uncommon for me to make something relatively mild and one of them to ask if they can have peppers with it, too. Who am I to say no?
Last summer I had access to garden fresh ones from a friend of the family, so I was using them frequently. One day, though, I burned myself really bad.
Until that point, I didn’t even own rubber gloves, much less actually use them, and I’d never had any issues. I would always just be careful not to get the oil in my eyes and wash well when I was done. Not this day, though. This particular day lit my hands on fire and they ached for over a week. I searched for solutions online but by that time, the damage was done and all I could really do was wait it out.
The worst part wasn’t the surface burns, though, but rather that the jalapeño fun had gotten under my nails, too, and even a simple act like scratching an itch would reignite burning sensations. If you’ve never been burned by peppers before (and I hadn’t…at least not more than just slightly anyway), it basically feels like you’ve touched a hot burner….and then laid out in the sun, fallen asleep, and sunburned yourself to a crisp. Except there’s no soothing it with aloe. :(
Anyway…
After my fresh stock ran out, my plan was to find a large jar of sliced jalapenos to have on hand. No more of this “cutting one a night” and risking burning myself again. Sure, I bought a pair of gloves to have on hand, but that’s not the point. I wanted to be able to reach into the fridge, pull out the little slices of heat, and move on.
Instead, I stumbled across the 6 *pound* can of jalapeño peppers and became giddy. Do you have any idea what I could do with that many peppers!?!? Yeah, me neither, but I was suddenly envisioning several bowls of different sliced, diced, and whole peppers, neatly stacked in the back of my fridge.
And so I made it true:
I immediately turned over half of the whole ones into pepper poppers. The rest got stacked neatly in the back of my fridge and have been used extensively since. I don’t remember how long it took me to do all the de-seeding and cutting, but it wasn’t ‘that’ long. Considering they’re pickled and we don’t eat ‘that’ many at once, these will last for many months to come, with no future effort required.
Tip: Do this while the kids aren’t home. I ended up terrifying mine by not letting them anywhere near where spicy oils might fly. I burned myself really bad, remember? Lol. The next few times I put jalapenos on the table, they were a bit reluctant to pick them up with their fingers and I felt bad. :( Oops!
Recent Comments