Best Beef Stew

Apologies to my loyal readers (all 3 of you) for the late arrival of this installment in my cooking blog. I prepared this recipe last weekend but had a crazy busy work week and never got around to writing about it. Finally, I found the time give this basic yet delicious recipe the analysis it deserves.

I have to admit I hadn’t really been looking forward to making the “Best Beef Stew” Recipe in this month’s Cooks Illustrated. It just didn’t seem all that exciting. The picture of a bowl of beef with some carrots, potatoes, and gravy just looked bland. I had good reason to feel this way. Many beef stews are bland with meat either too mushy or too chewy. Too be fair, my most recent experiences with beef stew had been canned Progresso, which while good for canned soup tend to only be eaten when they are the last thing in the cupboard. It is certainly not something I would order in a restaurant, unless it was the house specialty, but I probably wouldn’t be going to a restaurant where beef stew is their specialty either. By now I know enough to expect to be pleasantly surprised by these recipes where seemingly simple dish—things I would otherwise overlook if I wasn’t forcing myself to do all the recipes in this magazine—can often turn out to be quite impressive.

The surprise I expected came again this week. The Best Beef Stew recipe lives up to its name. This stew is the epitome of hearty. The beef was so… beefy. I made it on a cold day at the end of a cold week and it really just hit the spot. There is something very primal and basic yet decadent about beef stew. Eating it makes you feel like the wealthiest peasant in the kingdom.

This picture simply does not do it justice.

In true Cook’s style, the great taste of this stew is in large part due to science. This week I learned a lot about glutamate. It has given me a new appreciation for anchovies and tomato paste. Glutamate makes things like meat and fish taste better. It is the “g” in msg, but also occurs naturally in many things used to enhance flavor in cooking (and doesn’t have the negative side effects of chemically isolated glutamate like msg). It acts as a neurotransmitter and tells your brain something is savory. In Japan, it’s called “umami”. My appreciation for glutamate started unbeknownst to me last week when I used fish sauce in the Thai Chicken Basil. Fish sauce is basically anchovy juice which is basically glutamate and thus enhances any savory flavor. The beef stew recipe combines high glutamate ingredients tomato paste, anchovies, and salt pork to really enhance the flavor of this stew.

Take away

• Glutamates enhance savory flavors. Get over your irrational dislike for anchovies: they can be an amazing flavor enhancer.

• In Manhattan markets you can find the very basic or gourmet food quite easily; things that fall between the two are tougher to find. Salt pork is one of these items. (Because I have learned so much about pork since starting this cooking adventure I knew pancetta would be an OK substitute.)

• Meat- don’t crowd it when you brown it.