Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Perfect Storm Beef Stew


Perfect Storm Beef Stew
Original Recipe by Heidi DeLap

This is not a recipe from an old cookbook.  It is, however, cooked in the same manner.  I used only whole ingredients.  Other than the steak seasoning, it is all ingredients you would have found in the late 1800's.  This is a hearty beef stew, perfect for a stormy night.  It makes a lot of soup. 

1 pound beef stew meat
2 TBSP butter
½ large sweet onion
4 cloves of garlic
1 cup of flour
2 large potatoes
3 large carrots
4 small stocks of celery
Seasonings (I use steak seasoning, paprika, basil, parsley, thyme, marjoram, salt and pepper)


In a large soup pot sauté butter, minced onions and minced garlic in butter over a medium-high heat. While that sautés rinse the stew meat and drain. When the onions are see through coat the stew meat in flour and seasonings (I use steak seasoning, paprika, basil, parsley, thyme, marjoram, salt and pepper).  I rinsed and drained the meat in a large metal mixing bowl.  I put the flour and seasoning off to the side in the bowl, then just tossed the meat with the mixture to coat.

Toss the stew meat in the pot. This is going to brown a bit while you cut up your veggies. Stir it every once in a while, but not too often.

While the meat browns, process the veggies. Peel and cut into large chunks 2 large potatoes. By the time you are done with the potatoes, you are ready to add water into the pot. Add about 2 quarts of water to your meat mixture. Give it a good stir.  Make sure to scrape the bottom of the pot to get the brown bits into your broth.

Add in the potatoes and carrots

While you wait on that to come to a boil, process the rest of the veggies. I put in 4 small stocks of celery. Normally, I would put in mushrooms at this point, but my kids are picky and I didn't feel like fighting them.

Bring the stew to a boil, stirring often. Then turn it down to a slow simmer for a couple of hours. Stir pretty often, it will want to stick to the bottom. After the first hour, start tasting your broth. Make sure the salt and pepper is where you want it. I deem it done when the potatoes are almost all dissolved into the broth.

Served with the Cream of Tartar Biscuits from this blog, it was really a perfect dinner for a cold stormy night!

If you are making the biscuits, a single recipe makes one pie pan of small drop biscuits. It's enough for my family of 6. But if you are feeding more (and there is definitely enough of the stew), I'd make a double batch of the biscuits.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Cream of Tartar Biscuits

=Cream of Tartar Biscuits=

1 Pint of Flour 2 Teaspoonfuls of Cream of Tartar 1 Teaspoonful of Soda 1/2 Teaspoonful of Salt 1 Tablespoonful of Lard

Stir cream of tartar, soda, salt and lard into the flour; mix with milk or water, handling as little as possible. Roll and cut into rounds. Baking-powder can be used in place of soda and cream of tartar.

Modern recipe for Cream of Tartar Biscuits

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter (room temperature)
2/3 cup milk
1 tablespoon butter

Put dry ingredients in a bowl.  Add the tablespoon of room temperature butter.  Using two butter knives cut the butter into the dry ingredients.  Stir in milk.

Melt remaining butter in small baking pan.  Drop dough by large spoonfuls into melted butter.  Drop the biscuits close together.  Bake at 350* for 30 minutes or until a light golden brown.  This recipe made a dozen small biscuits.

I am lazy, I admit it.  I don’t like to roll biscuits out and cut them.  I just prefer to do drop biscuits.  If you want to roll them out and have cut biscuits use a little less milk.

Original recipe from
THINGS MOTHER USED TO MAKE
By LYDIA MARIA GURNEY
A collection of old time recipes, some nearly one hundred years old and never published before. 
New York 1914

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Potted Beef

For my first recipe I have been reading
THINGS MOTHER USED TO MAKE
By LYDIA MARIA GURNEY
A collection of old time recipes, some nearly one hundred years old and never published before. 
New York 1914


=Potted Beef=
3 Pounds of a Cheap Cut of Beef 1/2 Can of Tomatoes Salt to taste 3 Onions

Put the meat into a kettle, cover with cold water and boil slowly for three or four hours. Add salt and onions, cut fine. Put the tomato through a colander. Boil all together, and, as the water boils away, add more. Serve the meat hot. The liquor makes a delicious soup, thickened with two tablespoonfuls of flour.


We buy our beef from local farmers.  Our last batch had several steaks that are quite tough.  I figured this recipe would be a great one to try with those steaks.  Because the recipe is a slow cooking one, I decided to modernize it by using a crockpot.  The crockpot can be a busy mom's best friend!


Potted Beef
3 pounds of tough beef with fat trimmed off
1 14.5oz can of stewed tomatoes
3 onions chopped


Put the beef in your crockpot and just cover with water.  Cook on high for approximately four hours.  Remove meat from crockpot at this point and cut into bite sized pieces.  Use scissors to chop the stewed tomatoes while still in the can.  Put onions and tomatoes in crockpot along with the cut up meat.  Cook for another two hours on high.
Salt and pepper to taste.


This was a really good recipe.  The only changes I will make next time is to reduce the amount of onions and increase the cook time.  Three onions was a bit much for our family, next time I will probably only use one.  The onions were not as soft as I would have liked, I will increase the cook time to three hours after adding the onions and tomatoes next time.  I served this with garlic mashed potatoes and cooked carrots.  We will definitely have this again.

Old Cookbooks

I just love old cookbooks.  I mean REALLY old cookbooks.  I love that their recipes never call for a box of mix or a can of condensed soup.  The ingredients are whole, simple, and usually inexpensive.  I love the references to old fashioned cookery and kitchen utensils. 
The only thing I don't love about old cookbooks are the measurements and some of the cooking directions.  As the kitchen has modernized over the last hundred years, our directions for recipes have changed.  No longer are you asked to measure your flour in pints.  No longer are you asked for a "moderate" temperature in the oven.

This blog is my own personal adventure in bygone recipes and cookbooks of yesteryear.  I am going to post original recipes and my own modern variations of them.  I will try to stay as close to the original ingredients as possible.  I believe it's time to bring real food back into our kitchens.

I hope you will join me in my adventure!  Please post your attempts with old fashioned recipes and suggestions of different ways to try old things.