Tuscan Style Beef Stew Recipe 375

Steps:

• Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook beef in batches in hot oil until browned completely, about 5 minutes per batch. Remove browned beef cubes to a plate lined with paper towels, keeping skillet over heat and retaining the beef drippings.
• Cook and stir onion, celery, and carrots in the retained beef drippings until just softened, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir mushrooms and garlic into the onion mixture.
• Pour red wine into the pan; bring to a boil while scraping the browned bits of food off the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Continue cooking the mixture until the wine evaporates, 7 to 10 minutes. Stir tomatoes into the mixture.
• Return beef to skillet with potatoes, basil, thyme, marjoram, and sage. Pour beef stock and tomato sauce over the mixture. Bring the liquid to a simmer.
• Reduce heat to low and simmer until the beef is very tender and the sauce is thick, 4 to 6 hours.

Steps:

• In a large saucepan, cook onion and garlic in olive oil for 5 mins until softened and turning golden. Tip in the beef strips, pepper, tomatoes and rosemary, then bring to the boil. Simmer for 15 mins until the meat is cooked through, adding some boiling water if needed. Stir through the olives and serve with mash or polenta.

Steps:

• Serves 6 to 8 We prefer boneless short ribs in this recipe because they require very little trimming. If you cannot find them, substitute a 5-pound chuck roast. Trim the roast of large pieces of fat and sinew, and cut it into 2-inch pieces. If Chianti is unavailable, a medium-bodied wine such as Côtes du Rhône or Pinot Noir makes a nice substitute. Serve with polenta or crusty bread. 1. Toss beef and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt together in bowl and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. 2. Heat oil in large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until just smoking. Add half of beef in single layer and cook until well browned on all sides, about 8 minutes total, reducing heat if fond begins to burn. Stir in 2 cups wine, water, shallots, carrots, garlic, rosemary, bay leaves, cracked peppercorns, gelatin, tomato paste, anchovy paste, and remaining beef. Bring to simmer and cover tightly with sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil, then lid. Transfer to oven and cook until beef is tender, 2 to 2 1/4 hours, stirring halfway through cooking time. 3. Using slotted spoon, transfer beef to bowl; cover tightly with foil and set aside. Strain sauce through fine-mesh strainer into fat separator. Wipe out pot with paper towels. Let liquid settle for 5 minutes, then return defatted liquid to pot. 4. Add 1 cup wine and ground black pepper and bring mixture to boil over medium-high heat. Simmer briskly, stirring occasionally, until sauce is thickened to consistency of heavy cream, 12 to 15 minutes. 5. Combine remaining wine and cornstarch in small bowl. Reduce heat to medium-low, return beef to pot, and stir in cornstarch-wine mixture. Cover and simmer until just heated through, 5 to 8 minutes. Season with salt to taste. Serve, passing extra cracked peppercorns separately. (Stew can be made up to 3 days in advance.) Cheap Wine is Fine Early recipes for peposo relied on inexpensive Chianti, while modern versions call for a midpriced bottle (whether Chianti or a similar Tuscan wine such as Montepulciano or Brunello). We made batches using cheap ($5), midpriced ($12), and pricey ($20) Chianti, along with other varieties we often use in the kitchen: Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Côtes du Rhône. We were surprised that the stew made with the cheapest Chianti went over well with most tasters. While the midpriced wine was agreeable to everyone, there was no advantage to cooking with the expensive bottle. Highly oaked, tannic wines like Cabernet became harsh when cooked, but cheap bottles of fruitier pinot and Côtes du Rhône made good stand-ins for the Chianti. Maximizing the Flavors from Wine and Pepper The flavor compounds in wine and pepper can be classified by their behavior during cooking. Stable compounds don't change, but volatile compounds evaporate, and unstable compounds break down. Over time, the result is a loss of flavor. Most recipes we found for this stew call for adding all the wine and pepper at once, at the start of a 2 1/2-hour simmer. At the end of cooking, the flavors remaining were only those of the stable compounds. By adding some of the wine and pepper 15 minutes before finishing cooking, and the remainder of wine and pepper at the end, we were able to preserve more of the volatile and unstable compounds, capturing the most fleeting, bright, fresh flavors from both the wine and the pepper.