Dark Days Meal #7: One-Pot Meal-Beefy Beef Stew

The Dark Days Challenge is on! Running until March 31, 2012 over 100 participants will be doing our best to cook and blog about one meal per week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients. Recaps will be hosted by the blog collective Not Dabbling in Normal where you can follow along with all of the other participants.


This week our Dark Days Meal was made for one of the voluntary Meal Challenges. The challenge as presented to us was - Soup and One-pot Meals: make a meal entirely in one pot like soup, stews, or a pan-roasted meal. When I saw this challenge I knew a beef stew was on way!! About 4 weeks ago Gail and I enjoyed a hearty beef stew from our freezer so I decided to challenge myself further by making a beef stock from scratch the night before to give my stew some extra flavor.

Extra Beefy Beef Stew

Using the beef shanks and a fatty piece of beef I got on Saturday from Charlton Orchards, and beef stew pieces from John Crow Farm. On Sunday I sweat a large red onion and a yellow onion from Red Fire Farm in Kate's Homemade Butter, browned the beef shanks and the fatty beef, and made a little more then a quart of deep rich brown stock.
The following morning I pulled out the same soup pot from the night before and browned the beef stew pieces, added 1/2 a bottle of the Plum Island Red from Mill River Winery in the style of beef bourguignon, the leftover meat and the stock and let everything cook and mingle at a low-medium heat, stirring frequently for about 45 minutes. While this was going on, I had soaked the meat & stock containers from the fridge in warm water and added these to the stock pot along with a huge pile of carrots from Terrosa Farm, as well as potatoes and more yellow onions from Red Fire Farm. I stirred frequently, adding water as necessary as everything cooked for close to 9 hours. Towards the end I added Garlic from Springbrook Farm along with dill and rosemary from our garden as well as a pinch of black pepper and salt. When all the ingredients were mixed together I added a splash more of the wine and let the flavors mingle and develop for a little while longer.
If the last beef stew I described as hearty this can only be described as beefy as the final product was thick with soft beef with the random larger chunk of beef stew pieces mixed in.
Overall it was very flavorful and maybe even a little too beefy, but it didn't stop Gail or I from each enjoying 2 servings for dinner as we toasted with the remaining wine!