Irish Beef Stew

For Valentine's Day this year, rather than give Mark candy or a stuffed animal, as we already have too many of those, I opted to buy him a couple of cookbooks.  See, Mark and I eat out...a lot.  I'm trying to change that, hence the cookbooks.  They are not so he can cook; they are so I will cook.  Each week, he gets to choose a recipe that I will prepare.  This week, he chose Irish Beef Stew.

Meals prepared in the crock-pot are so easy, and this recipe was no exception.  The hardest part was dicing the carrots.  I don't have one of those fancy chopping/dicing/slicing machines, so it was just me and a very sharp knife.  It probably didn't help that I had bought the little mini carrots.  I'm lucky I didn't cut myself.

Once I diced the potatoes and carrots, I tossed them into the crock-pot with some tomato soup, stew beef, and onion soup mix.  I left the crock-pot on low all night.  This morning, before heading off to work, I added some frozen peas and water.  With my concoction simmering, I went off to my job.

When we returned home for lunch a bit later, we had stew!  It smelled pretty good, and the flavor wasn't too bad either.  The carrots and potatoes had softened up nicely but were not yet falling apart.  The beef was a bit tough but that may have been because the stew was heated for twelve hours, rather than the suggested nine due to my work schedule.  It wasn't the sexiest meal I have ever had, but it got the job done.  The ingredients all blended together well, and I wouldn't change much.

Mark has declared the recipe a winner, so it will be placed in the recipe box for future use.  I'm going to make notes to try and improve on it next time.  The stew had a base taste.  It wasn't bitter, but I believe a little bit of acid would have improved the flavor.  I may use half as much tomato soup next time, subbing in some sort of beef stock instead.  Additionally, I may squirt in a bit of lemon juice to balance it all out.

We ended up warming the stew up for dinner tonight, as well.  It was even better the second time.  I think it would be good served on a bed of mashed potatoes too since it is a thick, hearty stew.  I don't know that it seems particularly Irish to me, but I will be making it again.  It was super easy and pretty tasty.