Stew-on-the-run

My day was absolutely crazy, starting at 7:45 and there was no clear end in site. So much to do, so little time. I had less than 10 minutes to get my dinner stew going, and I managed to whip it together.

A friend of mine asked me if I had a slow cooker, and my response was "NO". There are two issues with slow cookers, as far as I am concerned.

1. I don't have one
2. I don't want to smell garlic and onions (one of my favorite smells) at 8 in the morning.

I improvise a slow cooker by using a big ass dutch oven. Throw it all in, fill with liquid, pop it in the oven at a moderate low temperature, and walk away for a few hours.

So today in my 9 minutes, I managed to brown the beef, chop a bunch of veggies, add some seasoning, a bottle of leftover wine (I know! Leftover wine! What a concept!), some balsamic vinegar and toss the whole mess into the oven.

Pre liquid addition:

The important trick to browning the beef is that you DRY it first. Since I had zero time, I only got this one (above) picture of the stew. You'll have to use your imagination.

So you dry the beef, throw it in the dutch oven to brown, and while that is happening, you chop onions, carrots, celery (which I forgot), potatoes, yams and whatever else you want to add. I threw all those in, added a bay leaf and poured in the remains of a balsamic vinegar bottle. I then searched for leftover wine. I had about a cup of red, which was wonderful but wasn't enough to cover the meat. I had to search for more. The only thing I found was some white Reisling in the fridge. We aren't really white drinkers, which is why we had so much leftover. Into the pot it went. Which probably was a bit of a mistake, as it was pretty sweet, which I discovered 3 hours later when I tasted the stew. But more about that in a moment.

I covered the pot up, popped it in the oven at 300 degrees, and off I went to take my kid to get his braces off.
Before:

After:

Gorgeous.

So when we got back from the orthodontist, I tasted the stew. It was kind of sweet from the Reisling. To combat that, I added some liquid smoke and a bit of smoked salish salt. Worked perfectly.

Sorry, no pictures. Too busy.