Most people know that beef stew is better the second day. You can make the whole thing a day or two ahead and refrigerate it. Or, place it in the freezer where over weeks it will only improve.

In this recipe we take a slightly different tack. This is designed to invest an easy 1 ½ or 2 hours one evening in partial preparation, while you are cooking another meal. In this step you cook the meat. Carrots may also be cooked at this time, to absorb flavors overnight. Then the day of the party you finish with the boiling onions, mushrooms, green beans, and decorative peas.

Naturally, the two-step procedure can be bypassed and the stew made in one day, if desired.

The sauce

Another feature of this recipe, independent of the two-step procedure, is the sauce. This is small in quantity, concentrated with flavors of the meat and seasonings, somewhat shiny with a lovely burnt orange sheen. This is accomplished with the help of tomato paste for thickening and color. Additional thickening is provided by arrowroot or corn starch. Flour is avoided. No stock is necessary, as we are making our own stock.

For this sparse sauce, boiled potatoes make a suitable accompaniment. A more generous sauce, as to be used over noodles, is described in a variation below.

Serves 6

Rinse beef in cold water. Mash the garlic and fry in hot oil in the kettle. After 3 minutes take it out, earlier if it turns golden or brown. Discard the garlic.

Add beef to the kettle. Cook gently about 10 seconds on each side, enough to coat beef with the garlic-infused oil and brown it slightly.

Pour wine over the beef, then water barely to cover.

Add all seasonings. Add carrots, sliced or quartered. Cover and simmer gently for 1 ½ or 2 hours. This will be the mid-point for most cuts of stewing beef, which take 3 to 4 hours overall.

Note: carrots will be done in perhaps [.. 30 to 40 minutes ..]. Leave them a little undercooked, as they will soften slightly in the refrigerator. Lift the cooked carrots out and set aside. Add them back when you refrigerate the stew.

Variation

At the start include a little cinnamon, dried papaya, orange zest, or allspice berries, singly or in combination.

Plan of action: Normally 1 ½ to 2 hours of cooking will remain for the beef. During this time four additional events must be brought about. The tomato paste will blend with the beef broth, requiring some time for blending and clarifying. The onions and mushrooms will be boiled in the broth. The broth will boil down and thicken slightly. The green beans will be cooked separately.

Deoil the liquid.

Lift carrots out of the liquid. Place them on a plate and keep moist with liquid from the kettle. They will be added just before serving to be heated through.

Heat the kettle containing meat and liquid to the simmer point. Simmer partially covered.

Place tomato paste in a small bowl. Add water to dilute, stir, then add to the kettle.

To cook vegetables

While the meat is completing its cooking, prepare the vegetables.

To peel the onions, cut off roots but leave the base intact. Cut a cross in the base of each onion. Cover bottom of the pan with water. Cover and bring water quickly to simmer. Add onions and steam about 1 minute to loosen skins.

Add peeled onions to the kettle. They will take about 40 minutes. When tender, lift out onto a plate. Just before serving, add them back to be heated through.

At some convenient time, place mushrooms in the stew and cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Lift mushrooms out of the liquid. They also will be added back just before serving.

Thaw the green peas. Boil or steam the green beans. Set aside until needed.

Continue partially covered simmer until beef is done. It will be tender when pierced with a knife, and will taste done.

To serve

When it seems that meat is 30 minutes from finishing, it is time to address the issue of thickening. A compromise is always required, because the purest flavor results from no thickening at all. Yet most will want some thickening so that the sauce will coat the meat and an accompaniment such as noodles.

To thicken, place arrowroot in a bowl. Stir in water to make a thin paste. Stir paste into the cooking liquid. Simmer after addition, so that the arrowroot will complete its action. (If you are using cornstarch, it must be cooked [.. 10 minutes.. ] to lost its raw taste.

(May be done ahead to this point.)

Fifteen minutes before serving, add onions, carrots, and mushrooms to the kettle. Bring to simmer to heat through.

Put stew into a serving bowl. Sprinkle green beans on top, followed by green peas.

Variation

Add a few bite-sized pieces of red bell pepper at the same time as the onions.

To make a more generous, albeit somewhat less flavorful, sauce for noodles, dilute with a cup of water at the end and an additional teaspoon of arrowroot.

I am in the camp that believes pot roast or other stewing beef is rather bland and boring. In a beef stew the attraction is not so much the beef itself as the vegetables around it. Instead of vegetables, why not a piquante sauce?

There does seem an impulse to spice up beef. Witness sauerbraten, corned beef, ketchup on a hamburger, bottled steak sauce.

Stewed beef may be covered with a piquante sauce. Vegetables may be served separately. Or even simpler, serve the sauced beef with mashed potatoes and a salad.

In the recipe below, a simple piquante sauce is made by adding balsamic vinegar to the reduced beef juices. Elaborations are included in the variations.

Cook overnight beef stew, including or omitting carrots as desired. The second day, gather:

Take beef and its cooking liquid from the refrigerator or freezer. Deoil the liquid.

Stir tomato paste into the liquid. Simmer until beef is nearly done, perhaps an hour or 1 ½ hours.

For the last 20 minutes add balsamic vinegar.

Thicken with arrowroot. 

Add capers just before serving.

Variations

Add a few calamata olives 10 minutes before serving.

Add a few anchovies with the balsamic vinegar. These must be cooked 15 minutes or more so that they disintegrate and lose all suggestion of fishy taste. Used in this way, anchovies provide a rich, subtle undertaste to any sauce based on balsamic vinegar.

Decorate with frozen peas.

Serving Suggestions

Serve the beef on a plate with typical beef stew vegetables - boiling onions, mushrooms, green beans - around it. This is a sophisticated serving method favored by many of the new restaurants, both for beef and lamb stew.