[BLANK_AUDIO] One of the nicest kinds of dinner, I think, is the kind of dinner that comes all in one pot, where you've got your vegetables, your carrots, your carbohydrates, your potatoes, and your protein source, in this case some nice lean stew meat. And when that's all together in one pot it's easy, it's a complete meal and this is actually a really satisfying hearty meal for young children especially on a cold day when it's kind of rainy outside like it is today. Okay, so, as everything in my kitchen that's savory, this recipe is going to start with onions and garlic. So I'm just going to somehow get the skin off of this onion. I'm just going to cut it in half and I'm going to cut these pieces up. And for stew, they don't have to be finely chopped like they world be for tomato sauce or something like that. You can just cut them in kind of rough chunks like this because mostly this is just going to add flavor to your stew. So the next thing we have to do is get our garlic ready. Give it a whack to crack the shell. It comes off much more easily that way. This is also just for flavor. So the reason we chop the garlic is just to expose more sides of it to the, to the pot that it's going to be braised in. Wow, that was a strong onion. It's kind of refreshing. It clears your sinuses. So there is our garlic. And I'm just going to put it in with the onions. Now, the next thing that we're going to do is that we are going to season the meat. And, I don't like to wash a lot of dishes, so I try and use the actual paper that the meat was wrapped in as much as possible. I'm just going to unpack it. And then the first thing I'm going to do is just put some salt on it. Remember, we're going to try and hit all of those sensors. We're going to have it be a little bit salty, a little bit sweet, a little bit sour, and it's got the umami flavor or the protein flavor from the meat, and bitter we don't have to worry about, because we've got vegetables and things in it. So there's always a little bit of bitter. I'm going to put a bit of pepper on top. The thing about this kind of cooking is that it doesn't matter what spices you use. You can use any spices you like. I picked some that I like. This is chili powder. I'm going to put a bit of chili powder on. You can use anything you like, you can use some paprika, and just go for it. It doesn't matter if it gets on the paper because you're going to use those spices when you toss the chunks of meat around in the leftover spices. It's all going to get coated. This is coriander, I love coriander, but if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. Just choose spices that you like and be generous. And the last thing we have to put on is just a little bit of corn starch. You can use flour, but my four-year-old can't tolerate wheat, so I use corn starch, and I'm just going to dust a little bit of corn starch. Just because that's going to help this sauce to thicken. Doesn't this look easy? You think it's complicated to make a stew? It is so easy. Okay, so now I've got my big mess of spices and cornstarch and all of that stuff over this meat, and I'm just going to toss it. It's going to get noisy. [SOUND] Okay, so there is our meat, ready to be braised. Here are some carrots. And you want to cut them in big pieces because the stew is going to be sitting in the oven for quite a while, so if you cut them too small, then the pieces are going to overcook. So I'm just going to cut big chunks like this and each child will get a chunk and eat adult and then I have a bowl full of these nice, baby potatoes. They've been washed but you don't have to take the skin off of them or anything and we're almost done with our stew preparation. What we're going to do is we're going to brown that stew meat and then we're going to pour that sauce over the meat and then the meat is going to cook slowly in that sauce. It makes it so tender the kids love it. Okay, so what goes in here? Let's think. We need something sour, right? So we've got our lemons. It doesn't even matter if some seeds get in there because You're not going to be serving all of the sauce so the seeds will probably just stay at the bottom of your pot. There's our lemon for the sour. Then, you might believe that I'm saying, but I'm going to use a little bit of juice, because juice is a liquid, so it's going to give more liquid, and it's a little bit sweet, right? So you're just going to kind of glug in some juice. I'm making a big pot of stew, so you might use less if you're making a smaller pot. Chicken broth is going to add a bit of salty, umami type flavor. And the chicken broth is your backup. So if you're short on fluid at the end, you're going to top it up with chicken broth. That's always a safe bet. Then, I just bought a pasta sauce. You can use any kind of pasta sauce and you're basically just going to pour. Careful you don't get splattered. Do I have pasta sauce on my face? We're going to put some salt in here as well, just to balance off the flavors. I usually add a little bit of, like, a leftover bit of wine or something like that, just to help to tenderize the meat. So I'm going to see what we have. Not that we want to put too much in because the children will be eating it too. But, a little bit like that will just give it that little bit of bitter flavor as well. Now we're ready to sear our beef. Just pouring the olive oil in. Let it get nice and hot, and slide all of my beef that, has been covered in the spices and the, salt, and the pepper, and the cornstarch, and let it get nice and brown. No bowl to wash. What we're waiting for now is we're waiting to see that all of the cubes of beef look a little bit browned on each side, so that we can see that they've all had a chance to be exposed to the high heat at the bottom of the pot. Now that our beef is starting to look nice and browned on all sides of the cubes, I'm going to add the onion and garlic to get a bit brown and to be exposed to that heat. There's kind of like a thick paste that sticks to the bottom of your pot when you do this kind of braising. And if you can scrape that up with your wooden spoon it gets into the sauce and gives it a really nice flavor. It's kind of like a, a real bullion cube. Okay, so just pour our vegetables on top, put our sauce over the whole thing and pop it in the oven. And you can see we've almost covered all of our meat and vegetables. So that's going to get nice and tender in the oven, if we leave it there for a few hours. Make sure everybody's nice and submerged. Are you guys all in there? There we go. Now I'm going to cover it and I'm going to put it in my preheated oven. It's heavy. It's like lifting a small child. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
