Hot answers tagged stews
14
There really is no practical difference; the dictionary definition of a soup is:
a liquid food made by boiling or simmering meat, fish, or vegetables with various added ingredients.
Which also applies to any stew you can conceive of.
The technical, highly-nuanced difference is that of emphasis and intent. Stewing is a method of cooking the solids ...
13
Generally speaking when speaking of "stew beef", the meat will break down more the longer you cook it. I often make shredded beef for tacos out of that cut by simmmering it for a few hours or more. At 1 hour, I'd say it was undercooked.
For example: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Main/Beef/recipe.html?dishid=1772
In there he recommends using stewing ...
8
Is there some dialectical thing going on here? I have always known stews as stovetop and casseroles as baked, just as Jared said in his comment. See for example on wikipedia: stew vs. casserole; or in Merriam-Webster: stew (click the verb form) vs. casserole. (Casserole refers to the dish as well as the food cooked in it; it's pretty definitely something you ...
8
In the oven, that heat is coming from all directions more or less equally. On the stovetop, the heat is coming only from the bottom. This can potentially cause convection, and almost certainly requires occasional stirring (especially for larger batches), meaning that the ingredients are being moved around. The combination of the ingredients being heated more ...
7
I'd suggest skinless bone-in chicken thighs, as they have plenty of fat and collagen to keep them moist and tasty. I've cooked them in French-style wine-based stews, not to mention cacciatorre, for 2-3 hours before now and they just fall off the bone.
It is virtually impossible to overcook them, unless you boil them mercilessly for hours. Just get a nice ...
7
As far as I know, Collagen starts to break down below 60°C/140F, time play a big role, i.e. to get the same breakdown at 60°C as 80°C you might need 24-48h instead of 3-4h.
The higher the heat the more the meat is contracted and it will get dryer, in a stew that might not be as obvious as in other cooking methods but it should still be the fact. Compare ...
7
You want a cut amenable to stewing, which is a low, slow, wet cooking method--its a variant of braising.
These are generally tougher cuts with a lot of connective collagen which will convert to gelatin during the cooking, a part of the animal that works relatively hard in life. These cuts are flavorful and usually (relatively) inexpensive.
One cut that is ...
6
"Stew beef" is slightly cheaper than buying a whole roast and cutting it up, because the stew beef is made up of bits and pieces that were left over after the prettier roasts had been carved.
If it's not to your taste, spring for a whole roast and cut it up yourself.
WARNING: Fat content in meat that is supposed to be cooked for a long time is a good ...
6
Red Burgundy wine is made from Pinot noir grapes, so a Pinor noir from another region probably will work well. Wikipedia describes Pinot noir as “light to medium body with an aroma reminiscent of black cherry, raspberry or currant”, so any wine with those characteristics, such as a light Zinfandel or Shiraz/Syrah will be similarly substitutable.
6
Assuming a long, cooked stew. I cut up a well marbled chuck steak usually and chuck is what I'd recommend. You want enough fat that as the stew cooks long, the fat will render and leave nice, tender meat. Too lean and you're left with boiled shoe leather.
If you want a quicker stew, use a leaner cut of meat like sirloin. It will have a lot of flavor but ...
6
Salt is very much an individual thing. Luckily, you can always add more if needed.
The only rule of thumb I can think of is to add a little, taste, and see if it needs more.
I would also suggest sweating the vegetables before adding water, with some salt on them. Brings out the flavours better, thus needing less salt overall for flavour.
6
It is somewhere in the range between 70°C-80°C (160 to 175 F I think - conversion may not be exact), below that collagen doesn't hydrolyse.
There is no advantage in cooking at this temperature, as your actin has already denatured (that's what you are trying to avoid in roasts and steaks) and is very dry and tough. Without the lubrication from gelatine ...
6
There are several major varieties of clam chowder, which you can find enumerated on the Wikipedia page. New England clam chowder is characterized by a dairy base, usually with some sort of salt pork or bacon, and potatoes.
Note: the term chowder basically just means soup or stew, usually with seafood of some sort--very different dishes may go by the name.
5
Edit: If cooking longer softens the potatoes, then this isn't what's happening. In that case, well, you just need to cook longer. The main variable is probably temperature (maybe the pot isn't actually all hot for all 30-45 minutes), followed by variations in cut size and in the firmness of the original potatoes. But the rest could apply to some readers too!
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5
This is my personal experience. It takes sometime to reach the boiling temperature (again) when you add colder water. As a result, vegetables get cooked for a longer period than anticipated. This makes some vegetables becoming mushy and not tasting as good as otherwise. (Example: Egg Plant) Therefore, I make sure to add the right amount of water in the ...
5
If you want to be really lazy about it, just get yourself a fat separator. Pour in the soup, the fat will rise to the top, and you can do what you want with it (i.e. dump it).
If you're reading this in an emergency, you can do this with just a strainer. You'll get better results if you chill the strainer before each skim, i.e. by rinsing it with very cold ...
5
In addition to Joe's great answer, in my childhood (where they were usually called 'bakes' (the food), but they came out of a 'casserole' (the vessel).) I learned two other important differences:
time. A 'stew' was never done in less than 2 hours. It wasn't uncommon for it to bubble away in the crock pot or a dutch oven for 4 or 5 hours. A 'bake' by ...
5
You have some good answers here. I would suggest the following.
Always have plenty of liquid for slow cooking any meat. You can ensure this by cooking in a covered pot/wrapping in foil if in the oven or keeping the lid on for a slow cooker. Placing you meat on vegetables such as carrot or onion will add flavour and moisture. Look at it after an hour or so ...
5
Of course you can use it. You can use any edible liquid: water, wine, chicken stock, pineapple juice, whatever.
The real question is whether the flavors the wine was mulled with are compatible, and you enjoy them. If they will compliment your dish, go for it. I cannot speak to your taste in stew but the sweet spices often used in mulled wine may give it ...
4
As Jared mentioned, 'stewing' always involves a fair amount of liquid -- it's a slow, moist cooking process. It's not quite a braise, as with a braise, the item is only partially submerged, whereas with a stew, you have smaller chunks of things that might float, but for the most part are submerged. You can make really thick stews (I tend to grate a potato ...
4
In Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child says it should be made with a full-bodied young red wine. She lists the following options: Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux Saint-Émilion, Burgundy, or a Chianti.
I've made it with a Bordeaux and can attest to it being delicious.
4
Rumtscho pretty much summed it up in his comment above: You can't really stew chicken breasts (at least not from the young chickens that are found in most supermarkets). The reason is that what makes a meat "fall apart" tender is its fat and collagen content. Collagen is connective tissue that is usually found in muscles that do a lot of work for the ...
4
Stewing tough or thoroughly connective-tissued meats is, by design, something you do for a long time at pretty decent temperatures. Since your meat has already been cooked once, if anything you are going to be cooking it slightly less than what is described in whatever stew you decide on. Your food safety concern is admirable, but as long as you observe good ...
4
The most obvious thing is it keeps your oven free; a range has only one oven, but four or so burners. Its also often easier to check on it, add ingredients, etc. stove-stop. Stove-top also lets you quickly turn up or down the heat. Stirring is easy stove-top, more annoying in the oven.
For what you're doing, the biggest difference is going to be where the ...
4
Rumtscho's answer is correct for most reasonable practical purposes--see Science of Cooking article on slow cooking, which breaks down the process in great detail, at various temperatures. The article provides primary sources if you wish to investigate further.
Collagen dissolves to gelatin between 160 F and 180 F (71 C and 82 C), but it is a time ...
4
I use a slow cooker to cook beef all the time. The general rule of thumb is that a high temp setting usually finishes cooking the contents in 4 about hours, a low temp setting is usually finished in about 8 hours. I've never had an issue with beef becoming tough in a slow cooker. Usually quite the opposite, it's so tender it falls apart.
In the oven, you can ...
4
I'm going to assume that you are covering your meat with liquid, because if you aren't that's the problem. Collagen needs heat plus water to break down, if you don't have liquid it will turn tough as old leather.
There is no point where meat gets tougher when being slow cooked, what happens first is that the collagen breaks down, then the proteins start to ...
3
Generally speaking, fat in your beef is considered a good thing, as it carries a lot of flavor. The "laced inside and out" you mention in a comment is called "marbling" and again, it's generally sought after. I suspect some of the reaction you're getting is because you're rejecting meat that sounds pretty good to many of us, and rejecting it for the reason ...
3
I'd suggest a chilli. Most people make it with ground/minced beef, but it's fantastic with chunks of 'stewing' beef. I usually use beef brisket, cut into large chunks (say 5cm) and simmer it for 3 hours before using 2 forks to pull the meat into shreds. Then bring back to the simmer for another half hour so the sauce reduces a little.
I've never made it ...
3
In today's modern culture and cooking style, the difference is likely unobserved.
I would consider a stew less constructed than a casserole, however.
While the stew would start with generally uncooked ingredients (perhaps except for browning the meat, and likely be mixed together while cooking to give a single-dish of meat, vegetables and sauce.
A ...
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