Hearty Beef Stew

"This is a wonderful starter recipe. Here is my variation, as well as some of the advice I followed by others... We were out of beef broth, so I used two beef granules in two and a half cups of wate..." See morer. I omitted the mushrooms and added chopped up green peppers. I also added an extra potato and more carrots. Because some complained about the potatoes not being done, I "par" cooked the potatoes in the microwave (2 minutes covered in water-drained and added) I was out of teriyaki sauce so I made a simple substitute--a little bit of cooking sherry, soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. It worked beautifully.. Also--to avoid the flour excess some spoke of, brown your stew meat in the 1/4 cup of flour before adding it to the crock pot. The spices I included were garlic, seasoning salt, a pack of onion soup mix, a pinch of ground cloves and patrika, salt and pepper. Enjoy!"

"I had just turned on the full crock pot before I read the reviews.. that's not like me! But at least I did read them in time to add a little liquid. I added roughly 2/3 Cup of Beef Stock and 1/3 cup o..." See moref Worchestershire Sause. I doubled the recipe, by the way. The Texture of the stew was really good. It's thick and just the way I like stew. Except for the Potatoes. I cooked for 5 hours, 3 hours on high and 2 hours on low, and the potatoes were still a little crunchy. I used Baby Yellow Potatoes, cut into less approx. 1/2 inch peices (at their thickest points) So I thought for sure they would cook, but alas, they did not. So cook on high! And the BIGGEST complaint I had about this dish was the paprika. If you do not use large amounts of paprika on a regular basis... DO NOT ADD IT! you can add a tiny bit, like 1/4 of what's called for, but if you are not familiar with the acidic tart earthy flavor, you probably wont like tablespoons of it in your stew. And the liauid you add. You should make it Reduced Beef Stock. Which means Buy Beef stock, put it in a saucepan and boil gently until it is reduced down to the volume of the amount of liquid you want to add. It will be very strong, and that's ok. It has the job of basically flavoring the whole stew."

"This stew was JUST what I was looking for!!! I doubled the recipe and we barely had any left from 6 adults!!! I added one more carrot, celery stalk, and potato than what the recipe called for because ..." See moreI LOVE lots of stuff in my stew. :) I also omitted the mushrooms (friends we had over don't like them) and added about 1.5 cups of frozen peas. I added about 1/4 cup more flour towards the end to make it thicker. Also, I used 1 can of low sodium beef broth and 1 can of regular and it came out just fine with less sodium! Because I doubled the recipe, mine cooked for 8-9 hours but it was a hit!"