Finally had our stew tonight. Been fussing around with the stock, slow cooking four pounds of stew meat and then putting it in the fridge, while I (today) slow cooked a crock full of potatoes & carrots in the broth from the stew meat. This along with the stock I made with lots of veggies and soup bones starting the other night.
It's been boiled, reduced, strained, boiled and reduced some more. Strained again.
Now it's all in one, big 2-1/2 or 3 gallon batch of stew save about a gallon of stock I stuck in the freezer for future use.
Made dumplings to go on top of it. I kinda improvised, dumplings are easy:
4 eggs and about a half cup of water, beaten into
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
Spoon into the boiling stew, cover for ten minutes and serve. They're easy, and the starch that leeches into the broth helps thicken it. Even Mo ate it, and last time I tried to put stew in front of her she sang 'Momma's Soup Surprise' while avoiding taking even a tentative bite of anything.
Her sister asked her what the dumpling was and Mo shouted 'Bread!' I'm like, well, yeah, basically. Good thing they like it, it's dinner Tuesday, it's dinner Wednesday, and it's going int he freezer at that point, to be many lunches and dinners to come. First time I've made a stew so big I had to make it in phases, but after not cooking much this summer the freezer was getting pretty bare on lunches to take to work and whatnot.
Except there's no dumplings leftover, so I'll have to make more of that.
(Oh, and if you're wondering, no it wasn't 10:45 when we sat down to eat. One of Mo's compulsions is poking clocks, so only the dial clock in my living room bears any resemblance to telling time these days.)
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