What’s Cooking Stewing!
Stews have been a foolproof way to cook meat, making way for it to become one of our regular proteins. Unlike a steak or fish, a stew is not delicate dish that needs to be watched (with our Instapot, you can just press a few buttons and leave the room to do something completely different). Additionally, you can make large portions; we usually make a big pot to have it for a few meals throughout the week and sometimes have even more that can be frozen for later.
Occasionally, we look up recipes for cooking times or seasoning combinations, but don’t follow them exactly. We normally just use these basic few steps:
- Brown and season meat and heartier vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, etc) separately.
- Throw in meat, vegetables, maybe additional vegetables (leafy greens, veggies we didn’t want to saute first), stock (it seems like we use this stock for everything), and whatever seasoning or flavor, into the pressure cooker.
- Cook for about an hour in the pressure cooker.
- Season to taste. And you’re done!
It’s fun to play around with the different meats, seasonings, and other things to add variety. One of our favorites combos has been pork with sweet peppers and spicy peppers/spices, but we continually try new spices, sauces, and vegetables. Any meat/vegetable/seasoning combos that you’d recommend?? Let me know!
And one of my favorite parts about making stew is having leftovers – many proteins do not reheat that well but you can reheat a stew without sacrificing flavor or texture. It’s already slow cooked to be tender and you can always add more liquid to keep it moist (sometimes it’s even better as leftovers because the flavors have had more time to meld together). We reheat and eat as is, or throw it in a tortilla, bread, fried rice, or some other dish to completely transform it.
Stews have been crucial to our shelter-in-place eating habits. We’ve been especially conscious of our food waste and consumption, so being able to throw whatever we have in a pot really helps us be flexible when we don’t want to make a non-essential trip to the store. But shelter-in-place or not, a stew is a simple warm, comfort food that is just so satisfying!
What kind of meat do you use for stewing? looks very yummy!!
We use everything! If we’re making pulled pork, we use pork butt or shoulder; beef – stewing beef or chuck. Chicken, we almost always get boneless thighs just because that’s what we prefer. I don’t think we’ve tried too much else because we would probably use nicer cuts for something else.