comment icon 611 more comments To answer your questions: YES, I’ve become a new person since this stew was introduced into my life. I am a non-beef-loving-part-time-vegetarian who now adores beef stew. I attribute my newfound love of beef stew to two things – 1) how easy it is to make, and 2) how truly, awesomely, gravy-loving delicious beef stew actually is. I guess I was just being judgy about it for a minute there. I grew up in a small town in Minnesota (hello, Cambridge!), along with my husband Bjork. When we both sat down to eat this and took our first bites of this beef stew as delivered by our friends Tyler and Heidi, we literally said, almost at the same time, “This tastes like Cambridge.” For both of us, beef stew tastes like dinner with grandma and grandpa on Sundays. It tastes like love. It tastes like home. Which is why it’s perfect for our Feeding a Broken Heart series. Food, love, home. 100% on brand. 4.6 from 163 reviews Traditional Oven Instructions: Preheat oven to 320 degrees. Place all ingredients in a baking dish – it can be glass or ceramic (we use a round casserole dish – something between 8×8 and 9×13). Cover with foil and bake for 3-4 hours. If the gravy dries out, you can add a little water to the gravy to loosen it up before serving. See notes below for additional modifications/instructions. Slow Cooker Instructions: Place everything in a slow cooker. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 4 hours until tender and cooked through. Technically at this point, it’s done. But I recommend finishing with a quick browning session in the oven (see notes below). Finishing in the Oven: Whether you make this in the oven or in the Instant Pot, I recommend finishing by giving it about 10-20 minutes in a hot oven (400-ish degrees), uncovered, before serving. It gets the meat nice and caramelized on top and helps the gravy thicken up. As written, this is more like a traditional saucy beef stew. If you want it to be more like a soup, just add a second can of tomato juice and an extra pinch of salt and sugar. The biggest challenge people have when baking this in the oven is that the sauce/gravy dries out. I would suggest adding a little bit of water (1/4 cup or so) before baking, and then periodically throughout baking as needed. The browned gravy will be really delicious, and a little water mixed in will easily bring it back to life. Another comment we often get is that the tapioca can sometimes still be visible in very small specks, which is okay. It’s so small and it should be extremely soft after cooking in the Instant Pot, so it’s never interfered with my love of this beef stew. It just looks like part of the gravy. But if that bothers you, just try one of our other tapioca-less methods listed above. Freezer Meal Version
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