Cowboy Smoked Beef Stew

hey guys indie here with outdoor reviews today we're going to be making some cowboy smoked beef stew we're going to do it the Dutch oven again these videos seem to be doing well so I'll give you guys what you want first I'm going to use this Dutch oven kind of like a frying pan and we're heating it up right now from just the bottom and we're going to use a lot of coals to get it nice and hot and then we'll Brown up the steak so we got this oven nice and hot on the bottom so we're going to go ahead and just pour on the beef fight for this you can use any type of a cheap steak again this is just some round top very cheap fifth sliced steak and then I just kind of cut it up with some cubes and because we're going to slow cook this so it's going to tenderize on its own it stirred up here this way okay carve spatula and with a piece of firewood gonna have the other day and you can do some Dutch oven cooking realize well we'll just go ahead and brown this up and let me go get some onions to add in there as well and what we're gonna do is we're going to let this kind of brown down a little bit and we'll add some butter and some flour we'll make a roux and then we'll add the rest of our vegetables and we'll let it stew up for two three hours and we'll just change the coals every hour so they go ahead and grab some onions real quick why does that I have about two onions in the amount you put in here is just depending on the size you want of the meal you want or how big your family is how many people are gonna be feeding wait we have five of us and this whole 10-inch Dutch oven seems to work well for us for a meal and it leaves leftovers for the next day as well so I'll go ahead and get this cook down and I'll bring you back when we're ready to create the roux all right so we've got some good juices going on this so I'm going to go ahead and add the butter so we can create the roof to make the good sauce for the let's do here about a half a stick will do really that too much and we'll let that melt down here in a second I'll add some flour into it and stir it up we'll get it going all right so the butters all melted we'll go ahead just add in a little bit of a flour here not much but there you go that's probably about let's see two tablespoons if that and we'll stir that in to thicken up the sauce and this will start to give it its a almost like a gravy but you know stews got like a little thicker juice to it and this is just something that we do a little differently we'll let that start to thicken up and give me a few minutes and I'll start adding the rest of the ingredients okay it's it's set up pretty good now so we'll go ahead and add about a tablespoon of chopped garlic as you can see right here I'll add that in there and I'll stir that in and then as we're just getting our gravy a flavor that we want and as you heard me in the beginning it's a cowboy smoked beef stew and I cheat Who am I for this if I was a smokin the beef beforehand I'd usually use some my leftover beef brisket that I smoked but uh I'm going to go ahead and use some liquid smoke and I'll just put it in just a little bit that's a lot a bit sorry gonna let that get in there and that would give us a nice smoky flavor to our beef in our our stew and we'll mix that in real well and then we'll go ahead and add in our potatoes and our carrots and our tomatoes here in a minute all right we're ready for our potatoes now and I think we cut up a few too many vegetables today but that's okay I'll make sure we have lots of potatoes because that's always a good base to have in here in your stew and I will add the carrots in right now as well that's what I might cut back on why not use as many but we have a bunch prepared so go ahead and add those that's not enough right there and the tomatoes as well and I'm just going to use a can of diced tomatoes you can use fresh and just saving time tonight and we'll leave that in there well as you can see worth packed to the rim here so I'm going to go ahead and throw my top on and I still have a good coal base on the bottom I'll swap that out here in a minute go ahead and throw the coals up on top I've got some hardwood coals I like these having a debt a Gabonese and a kingsford stuff for what I had but this will do these is what I prefer to have and I pick some up today so it'll be good go ahead and put that one that I dropped in there right on top and these burn a lot faster than regular charcoal briquettes but I don't know why this I like using them they're a little bit cheaper and smells like campfire when you when you're burning them so I'll go ahead and leave this for about an hour I'll come back and change out the coals I'll get them in the chute again here at about you know 40 minutes to get them nice and hot and I'll swap em out this will take about two-and-a-half to three hours to cook and we'll check with you later all right we're doing a cold change right now so this is a good time to stir it up and add a little bit of seasonings I'm going to add a little bit of salt to the mix just to do that I usually don't salt it until the very end that way people can get the desired amount that they like because I usually don't like too much salt on my food but that should do well and now go ahead and stir this up just to make sure everything's cooking evenly and it is let's turn it out really well so when these carrots are done that's probably when the students going to be done that's the what take so long for the stew the beef will tenderize with it as you can see everything's making a nice juice for it turn that for the soup consistency of a suit of a stew and it's turning out really well so alright let's go ahead and throw the cover back on and put some more coals on leave it on for another hour okay I pulled off some of the coals off the top more about 15 minutes from being done I don't really want to cook from the top anymore get letting it do a little simmer from the bottom and we'll pull this off in a minute and I'll show you guys what it looks like all right what about hit two hours on here the last batch is done I scraped the coals off before I opened it up and we'll check that out that looks fantastic it's done wrong how you want grab out of carrot out of there one of the big ones and see if it's tender that's our judge of whether it's done or not it's gonna be hot so tender oh yeah okay yeah that's hot okay so we'll go ahead and pull this off and we'll let it cool for about 15-20 minutes and we'll bring it inside and we'll have some dinner so some Cowboys - I'll show you guys a final product in a bowl here in a minute yeah pretty good so that cut in half pretty easily there you go all right so we'll come back in about 15 minutes and when it's done and wool and I show it serve it up you got this inside it's cooled down for a bit it's still pretty hot but let's serve this up let's go ladle here put it in and need to spoon this spoon will give you a quick taste test and make sure she's tender but uh as you can see everything is done other things blended well put pretty well together looks like it's going to be pretty good stupid well in the tapa I'll give her a taste test here oh yeah that meat is fall apart tender so a youth that I I got two of those big round top steaks they were a dollar fifty apiece so you know three bucks for all that beef and it's completely tender just like any other cut you'd get and you can spend very little money on it and have very good outcome so go ahead and give this one a try I think you guys will like it thanks for watching you

Channel: Country Living Homestead

Views: 623,887

Rating: 4.7561574 out of 5

Keywords: Beef stew, cowboy stew, smoked, beef, cowboy, stew, easy, dutch oven, dutchoven, dutch, oven, camp, camping, cooking, cook, off grid cooking, off grid, simple

Id: 5eeo-X0YyQk

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/jeanduluoz]

Also crowded the shit out of that pan with the beef. He practically steamed the meat. Zero sear, no crisp and no flavor

[u/Dave_the_lighting_gu]

I feel like it needs more seasoning, including minimum 2 bay leaves.

[u/crazycoffin]

While this is a fine recipe if you're out camping and just making a "dump" stew, if you're at home making it it's a ton of effort for very little relative reward.

If you're at home: don't chop up your meat so small. Just leave it as nice sized steaks, brown it, and then chop into big chunks. If you sear it as a steak, it'll actually sear and get caramelized instead of turning grey like it did in the video.

Also, after searing your meat, remove and set aside and saute your onions and garlic in the pot to scrape up the fond and create a better flavor base. Onions and garlic don't taste great if they're just boiled, which is essentially what happened here with dumping them into the watery beef.

There could be a lot more seasoning in this-- more salt, black pepper, red pepper, bay leaf, thyme, rosemary, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, red wine, etc. It looks very bland. Which is OK if you're camping and can't carry all these seasonings with you, but if you're cooking at home like he is in the video there's absolutely no reason not to season it up.

If you're making this at home, once the pot is full, stick it in the oven with the lid cracked. Keeping the lid on tightly as in this video will collect all the water that the veggies and beef are releasing and water down the final flavor. If you stew it in the oven with the lid cracked, that water will evaporate and the stewing liquids will reduce, concentrate, and become more flavorful.

All of this would require roughly the same (or even less) amount of effort as piling coals on top and changing the coals underneath the pot and lead to a significantly tastier end result. Heck, even if you're camping you could do most of this.