Greek-Style Beef Stew - How to Make an Amazing "Stifado" - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with greek style beef stew that's right i am very excited to be sharing my version of stefano which very well could be the best beef stew you've never had and apparently this dish was brought to venice by the ottomans where it made its way to cyprus and then greece and it's been my experience that any recipe that has that many stops on his journey is almost always an incredible thing to eat and this is no exception and to get started the first thing we'll need is a big old hunk of beef and what i have here is a beef chuck roast which i think is the perfect cut and what we'll do first is try to cut some two inch pieces which is very easy since this is about two inches thick so if we cut over about two inches to make a strip and then turn that and cut across every two inches or so if my calculations are correct we should have something pretty close to two inch cubes but having said that as long as your pieces are about the same size it really doesn't matter if they're a little bigger or a little smaller than mine since the most important thing is that they cook evenly and if you have a bunch of big pieces in a bunch of little pieces that won't happen and we don't really need to trim any fat off this although if you have a couple solid pieces that were on the ends you can go ahead and trim those off and then what we'll do once that's cut up is transfer it into a bowl and we will season it very generously with freshly ground black pepper and what looks like too much kosher salt but it's not all right a good rule of thumb is about a teaspoon of kosher salt per pound of meat as far as the initial seasoning goes so that's my starting point and once that's applied we'll go ahead and toss that thoroughly and then once we have that meat evenly coated we can go ahead and transfer that into the fridge until we're ready to use it whether that's in 10 minutes or a couple hours or even the next day and then once our beef set we can move on to prep some shallots which sort of look like smaller skinny red onions and traditionally these are kept whole which is why we got to pay attention to this root end since that holds everything together we don't want to cut that but we will cut off the top and then make two more cuts about a quarter inch down so we have something to grab onto as we attempt to peel off the skin which i'm not going to lie is very challenging since at first you think you can peel off just the skin but after a couple seconds you realize that's near impossible so you give up and you just pull off that first layer of shallot all the way down to the root and of course you save that in the freezer for the next time you make chicken stock since shallots are incredibly delicious and the reason we're using them here but anyway we'll go ahead and peel as many of those as we can stand and again using them whole is traditional but if you want to avoid all this trauma and just chop them up go ahead it will still taste really good oh and if after peeling you realize one of your shallots was actually two smaller shallots you can just pull those apart it'll be fine all right despite our best efforts some of these are going to fall apart anyway and that's it once our shallots are set we can head to the stove where i have a very heavy duty pan set over high heat into which i poured a couple tablespoons of greek olive oil and once that oil is very hot we'll go ahead and brown our beef in two batches since we want to get a really nice dark crust on this which means we don't want to crowd the pan so yes two batches is going to take a little bit longer but the results are going to be much better and by the time we finish our second batch we are going to have an amazing fond which is all those caramelized meat juices on the bottom of the pan formed on the bottom of the pan and i hate to give times here right maybe we sear this for about four to five minutes per side but we really want to go by eye and it doesn't matter how long it takes we want to get a nice dark deep brown sear and then what we'll do once both batches of our beef have been browned as we'll turn off the heat and we'll add another tablespoon or so of olive oil and we will toss our whole shallots in at which point after the pan has cooled for a couple minutes we can put the heat back onto medium and what we'll do is toss those shells around this hot pan until they get a little bit of color on the outsides and of all the steps in this recipe this one is probably the most optional since our pan is flat and our shallots are not flat at all so there's not a lot of surface contact but any kind of extra browning is definitely going to be a little bit extra flavor so personally i think it's worth a couple extra minutes of time but if you're not into it don't worry about it i mean you are after all the discos do of your beef stews to do's and this stew is going to simmer for a long time so those shells are going to get cooked whether you brown them or not and then after those have been browned on medium we will add another splash olive oil to the pan and then still on medium we will saute some diced onions and some finely minced garlic with a big pinch of salt for just about a minute all right we don't brown that garlic but we just want to give it a quick stir fry although it might look like it browns a little bit because the bottom of that pan is so dark but don't worry if you only do it for a minute it's not going to brown and then after that gets a quick sizzle we'll go ahead and add our tomato paste and we will stir that in and we will toast that to the bottom for about two minutes which seems like a minor step but it really does add a lot of flavor or as the celebrity chefs call it umami which is that intense savoriness you get from some foods toasted tomato paste being one of them and then once we have improved the taste of our tomato paste we'll go ahead and deglaze the bottom with some red wine vinegar plus some white wine and i think most people that make this use red wine but i really do prefer the white since it's not as tannic and i just prefer to the bolder more intense reds but anyway we'll go ahead and stir that in making sure to scrape all that goodness off the bottom as we do and at this point we can raise our heat to medium high since we want to reduce these liquids by about half and while we're waiting for that to happen we can go ahead and toss in some white sugar which is very important to balance the acidity we will also toss in a little bit of cinnamon which traditionally is a cinnamon stick but the ground works fine as well as a little bit of allspice plus a small pinch of ground clove all right just a touch too much of that can overpower a dish and then we'll finish up our seasonings with some dried oregano plus a couple bay leaves and then last but not least a couple sprigs of rosemary and we'll stir that in and like i said we're waiting for this to reduce by about half and start to thicken up and a few minutes later this is what mine look like and once it does we go ahead and transfer our brown meat back in along with our hole shallots at which point i'm going to very carefully toss this all together which is not easy because this pan is full and that's exactly why i switched to a more flexible more curvaceous stirring tool oh and i should mention if you don't want to deal with the shallots or you can't find them a lot of modern versions of this recipe just use frozen pearl onions which will look nice and kind of do the job but nothing and i repeat nothing tastes like a shallot so that is definitely my choice but you do what you got to do and then once that's set we can add our last ingredients which would be a couple cups of beef broth or chicken broth or if times are tough even some nice cold fresh water would work and we'll go ahead and stir that in and wait for this to come back to a simmer and then once this comes back to a bubble we can reduce our heat to somewhere between low and medium low or whatever setting maintains a nice gentle simmer and we will cover this and cook it covered for one hour right my general rule of thumb for this kind of stuff is one hour covered and then one hour uncovered or until it's exactly how we want it and while our stew slowly simmers to perfection there's a few things we're going to want to do which are the same things we do to every stew oh yeah it's true and those things include giving it the occasional stir moving pieces from the outside to the inside and pieces from the inside to the outside and sometimes i'll even flip a few pieces over all right it depends on my mood and then besides the occasional agitation we will also monitor our liquid level and if the stew starts getting too thick and dry before the meat's tender we will of course add another splash of broth or water right that is just us cooking so we'll keep an eye on that and then if you want at any time during this uncovered step you want to skim a little bit of fat off the top feel free alright a lot of people do and a lot of people don't but in general i usually do skim off a little bit but anyway to recap we are stirring occasionally we are monitoring our liquid level and we are possibly skimming fat which brings us to by far the most important thing we do which is to make sure this is fork tender before we serve it and for me the perfect doneness for a stew is when a fork will slide easily into the meat but the meat has not started to fall apart yet on its own and right here mine was very close but i decided to give it another 10 or 15 minutes and as i've said for years every stew recipe online should be five stars since all the people that post bad reviews always say the same things the meat was not tender and or the stew was not flavorful which is so confusing and infuriating because why did they stop simmering it okay if your meat's not tender yet let it simmer until it is don't stop eat it on tender and then write a bad review that makes no sense and then as far as the flavor goes that just requires you tasting it and adjusting with some more salt if it needs it which it quite often does so besides making sure your meat is fork tender we will definitely give it a taste also and adjust if need be and that's it once it's feeling and tasting exactly how we want we could go ahead and serve this up or we could if we want time permitting turn off the heat let this cool like i'm gonna do and then refrigerate this overnight since for various reasons a stew is always better the next day that is just a fact right the color deepens the flavors deepen the meat seems to be even a little more succulent and tender so that is exactly what i did and i went ahead and served that up next to a couple slices of greek bread well actually i don't have access to greek bread and i didn't have time to bake some but some french or italian bread will do nicely and besides being one of the most delicious dudes of all time if there's a beef stew that has a better color than this i would love to see it since this is absolutely gorgeous and then once we have that spooned up you can serve this as is and it will be magnificent but i'm going to go ahead and top mine with some crumbled feta plus just because i have them and they look nice a few sliced pickled red onions and then for a final touch a little bit of freshly chopped herb is nice whether it's parsley or dill or mint or any combination and that's it our greek style beef stew is ready to enjoy and i can't even begin to explain how much i love this stuff but i will try and besides being just an extra beefy super savory perfectly constructed beef stew we have a beautiful balance between the tanginess of the vinegar and the wine and then the sweetness from the shallots and that little touch of sugar with everything being elevated by those aromatic warming spices in the background oh and by the way as we touched on earlier if you need a knife to cut the meat it did not cook long enough but i do serve this with a knife so that we can easily cut those shallots into bite-size pieces all right sometimes if you try to do that with a fork the center of the shell will shoot out across the room which while very comical can also be a little bit messy so the knife is a safer bet and man are those shells delicious i mean almost as good as the beef and this is probably my favorite way to eat it just with some bread on the side to dip in that amazing sauce but since i teased this recipe in our last video which was greek spinach rice let me go ahead and finish this video up with a shot of this served on that which as you might imagine was a fantastic pairing so i'm sorry if i'm sounding greedy but i really want you to make both but no matter what you serve this honor next to it truly is one of the world's great stews which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 282,991

Keywords: Greek, Beef, Stew, stifado, easy, meat, stewed, recipe, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, side, dish, gluten-free, keto, paleo

Id: EUP4OhS0nBo

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2022