Beef Barley Stew

Earlier this year I experimented with being a vegetarian and miserably failed. Although I have found a happy medium in eating seafood and having normally one meet dish every other week, I still cook with meats here and there. I generally cook German or English Sausage but my husband had mentioned during the month that he wanted stew and the only stew I know has well, beef.

This concoction really doesn't have a recipe because I really just made it on the fly... so this may not be the last stew recipe on this blog.

I started out by dicing up an onion and some garlic and sauteing it in my dutch oven and then adding some stew beef rolled in about a 1/4 cup of flour that I bought at, you guessed it, Aldi's.



I know, it doesn't look that great, but it got the Quality Control Gracie on the job.



While it browns up in the pot, I give it an occasional stir. Since I multitask well, I begin to cut up about 2 cups of carrots because I like carrots.



When I notice that the meat is getting browned up I deglazed the pot with a little bit of wine that I got in August in Pennsylvania when Danny and I took a weekend escape. It's a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Clover Hill Winery which is right outside of Allentown, PA in the heart of the Lehigh Valley Wine Country, and it really gave this stew a great flavor.



And if your ever in the Allentown area check out them and Vynecrest because they have a wonderful cherry wine that would be a great dessert with some chocolate... but back to the stew!

I then added three cups of water and two bullion cubes to the meat since I don't keep stock in the house, bullion to me makes just as good of a stock without having to find a place to keep all those cans.



Once I give that another good stir I add in the carrots I chopped up and stir them into the mixture.



Well since this is Barley stew I had bought the barley for the stew last month at Whole Foods up in Middletown, NJ.



Again, I'm not into the whole organic thing, but I like buying my barley in bulk there since I know it hasn't been sitting forever like in the Shop Rite by me. Plus I feel like a cool kid when I shop in Whole Foods, like a cool hippie kid.

I only add in an over flowing 1/2 cup of barley because I have learned the hard way that this stuff can swell.

Once that is done I thought my stew needed more veggies so I added in some frozen corn and frozen peas.



I let the stew cook for about 1 1/2 hours until the broth was nice and thick and the barley was cooked.

Finally dinner was ready and it ended up looking like this:



Of course I served it with the same wine I used to deglaze although I do not care for Cabernet's my husband loves it and the stew even got my husbands seal of approval.



I wish I could give you a better recipe for my little creation but you'll have to do the deducing from the blog itself. Remember that cooking soups and stews you really have a lot of leeway and can add anything from beans, mushrooms, or other veggies you have laying in the fridge, cans or in the freezer. Cooking is great because you can experiment alot with it, so get in the kitchen and have some fun!

Happy Cooking!