Desperation Dinners: Stew Beef like Grandma used to make
I wasn’t quite prepared for the answer when I asked my mom for the recipe for the “stewed beef” I loved as a child.
“I don’t really have a recipe,” she said. “I just make it the way your great-grandmother used to.”
In my family, that’s often how it goes. Mom learned to cook watching her mother cook, who watched her mother, and so on backward — and forward — in time. It may sound odd coming from someone who writes cookbooks, but the best recipes I know I learned while watching my mom cook. And now, my own daughter is learning from me.
Although I can’t imagine how, I never watched Mom make today’s recipe. Its Southern, antique name is “stew beef” — as opposed to beef stew or even “stewed” beef. It’s extremely simple to make — just beef cooked with some onions and a bit of herbs until it falls apart. After some experimenting and several telephone conferences, this is as close as I can come to an old-fashioned recipe that’s just as good now as it was then. (By the way, the onion-soup mix is my own modern update.)
In the old days, this beef dish was usually served over white rice, but we also love it over mashed potatoes or old-fashioned egg noodles. And of course, brown rice or polenta would be terrific, too.
For a more modern and typical beef-stew recipe (with potatoes and carrots), visit our website, KitchenScoop.com.
Suggested menu: Great-Grandma’s Stew Beef with cooked rice and steamed broccoli spears.
Ÿ Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross are co-authors of “Desperation Dinners!” Write them at Desperation Dinners, c/o United Media, 200 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016. More at the Desperation Dinners website, kitchenscoop.com.