What to do with stew beef?

(Central Florida Bob ) #1

We’ve been picking up a package of “beef for stew” fairly regularly to add some variety to our foods. These seem to be trimmings that need a low and slow cook immersed in water. Some folks probably use a crock pot, but three hours seems to be the number on my stove (and now I’m realizing, I’ve never measured the temperature of the slow boil it does).

Since it’s something I’ve cooked all my life, I’ve been cooking it in tomato sauce that I make from canned tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and a bunch of stuff. It’s good, but tomatoes have carbs. Most alternative stews either have potatoes, carrots, radishes or other stuff that’s as bad as, or worse than the tomatoes.

This is a good place to ask around for keto-friendly ideas for the beef cuts. Is there anything that’s carnivore friendly?

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #2

Like you I put onion and mushrooms plus I put in a load of garlic. Other things I might sometimes add are, cardamom (slit) or cinnamon or cloves. Green chillies I slit and add whole and remove i it gets too hot.

(Geoffrey) #3

First let me say that I’m not keto but carnivore so my stew is based on my diet. Obviously it can be adjusted to whatever your tastes and preferences may be.

My stew is very basic and simple. It’s makes a good foundation to build from.
First off, I use any kind of meat that I have on hand, especially tougher cuts. So it may be venison, bison, beef, lamb or pork. I process much of my own meat and will save the scrap pieces for stew meat. I also will use a roast or steak if I have nothing else.
I will season the meat with salt and white pepper and sometimes, if I’m feeling just a little less carni that day, a little Cajun seasoning as long as it doesn’t have sugar in it.
Now my preferred method is to allow the seasoned meat to rest for a couple of hours to allow the seasoning to work its way into the meat a little. Then I like to put it on the smoker for a couple of hours. Smoking really adds such a great flavor to the stew. If you don’t have a smoker then the next best thing is to sear it in a hot skillet to get a nice crust on the meat. Use only animal fats or keto friendly fats for this.
Meanwhile, in a crockpot I put one or two cups, depending on how much meat I’m using, of bone broth. I use a clean bone broth. For me this is important because many I’ve come across have additives that I just don’t care for. I turn the crockpot up to high to get the broth heating up while I’m searing the meat.
Add the meat to the broth and deglaze the pan, if you seared the meat, with some apple cider vinegar and then add that to the pot.
Now at this point, if you’re cooking carnivorous, you could just put the lid on and let it simmer. After 3-5 hours, depending on the meat and how big the chunks are, you’d have a wonderfully tender and savory meat stew that is so good and satisfying. But, if you need more then add what you please. I don’t know what you allow on your diet but if you can tolerate them, onions are a great flavor enhancer as well as garlic. Mushrooms are also a nice addition.
So basically the foundation is just meat, bone broth and salt. You decide how you want to build from there.
This is my stew made of some cheap and tough skirt steak. Tender and oh so savory.

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#4

Much the same a Geezy, but I can’t resist mushroom flavor, not the buttons but the large portobellos. One can find them in powdered form, that works too. Also, I add a bit of Cayenne pepper, or crushed pepper flakes, because I like a little heat. Not perfectly clean carni, but not a big deviation.

(Mike W.) #5

Beef stroganoff. Minus the noods of course. Creamy and delicious.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #6

Ooo yeah, good choice. I’d go for that… And if you really want pasta, theres always Konjac noodles.They mean I can cook a meal for the familly.

Konjac

(Central Florida Bob ) #7

I do as well. A running joke between my wife and I is, “I have blood in my garlic stream.” Jalapenos, or other hot peppers are usually in there, too.

Do you use a bone broth base, like @Geezy56 says?

(Central Florida Bob ) #8

Thanks, Geoffrey,

I think this is going to be the next way I try. Not as much liquid in the dish as I get with can of tomatoes, but that either gets eaten, put aside or wasted, neither of which seems good in my mind. This is definitely a good looking approach.

#9

I never made a carnivore stew as I like the normal Hungarian stews… The simplest form (my family always used that) is fat, salt, meat, onion and paprika. One doesn’t need to use much onion (especially if low-carb, keto and carnivore changed sweet perception… onion is quite sweet and I hate sugary meat dishes. thankfully my high-carber SO has a drastically lowered sweet perception and prefers little onion just like me) and I am not strict, I rarely do carnivore, staying close most of the time is enough so that works for me. But I wonder what happens if I skip onion so I will try that one day. It should be still nice! And using some paprika as the only non-animal item is carnivore enough to me :wink:

Our stews often contain sour cream too though it’s mostly for chicken. But works for the other meats too. The extra fat may even come very handy if we want to base our day on the stew and the meat isn’t fatty enough for that to be enough.

They are tasteless and expensive compared to their nothingness (and they aren’t carnivore anyway) so I never would choose them but I have eggs :smiley: Perfect pasta. The traditional pasta here doesn’t use water anyway, just eggs, I simply skip the flour too… :wink: But as I always say, I am an egg maniac :slight_smile:

But meat and egg is a good combo in many form.

(Bob M) #10

While I think the options above are good, I don’t worry too much about tomatoes. A can (14 ounces) has 18 grams, so 2 cans would have 36 grams. If you split that by a few pounds of meat, say 5 pounds, it’s not much per pound.

(Peter - Don't Fear the Fat ) #11

I too use them sometimes. More recently I’ve been using tomato paste (the concentrate) That means I’m unsure of the origin re GM etc but it’s 17g carbs for the whole tube so I’m using about 2 or 3g in a whole dish, also I get less Tom liquid so can use bone broth or a splash of water.
I get really nice slow cooker results with minimal liquid.
But theres so many ways to go here and it’s great to mix it up.

(Brian) #12

I suppose a strict carnivore probably wouldn’t even use garlic as a seasoning. (?) Dunno. I like using garlic, onions, mustard, vinegar, and a few other things a little too much to quit them completely. I kinda get leaving a lot of the veg, even the low-carb and keto friendly veg behind. I’m leaning more towards those things being condiments and seasonings more so than food groups.

It was somewhat amusing. At the farmers market yesterday (we grow and sell) we left a little before we were sold out. We ended up giving a few things to another vendor that we like and he felt like he had to give us something in return. So he gave us a package of microgreens. It was a beautiful package to look at. And my dear wife did bring it home and had some with supper. Supper was a nice juicey 1/2 pound hamburger, homemade. No way I wanted any of those greens on my hamburger. They didn’t even look appealing to me. I did have a slice of real cheese, a little mustard, and a slice of tomato on top. But that’s just me. Carnivore? Nope. Keto? Yup. What wasn’t carnivore, though, was pretty minimal.

And to think, I was once a vegan… :confused: Not anymore! Not even sure if I’d be on this side of the grass if I’d stuck with that nonsense. FWIW, I just heard the news that Dr. Hans Diehl passed away a few days ago. He pushed the CHIP program (I forget if that’s pushing vegan exactly but he was a popular figure among them). He was 77.

(KCKO, KCFO) #13

I often use celery, zucchini, and radishes. Onions and jicama have also gone into my beef stews. I do limit tomatoes because I can get rosacea symptoms from too many eaten at once.

Adding any veg is going to take it off the carnivore spectrum. .

(Central Florida Bob ) #14

That’s the way I’ve been. I use a big can, 28 ounces, but the label says the whole can has 42g total carbs and 13g of fiber or 29g net carbs. I get a dinner and lunch the next day out of it, and while I’ve put some of the sauce in the freezer for another day, I figure I eat around half of that or less between two days. Not terrible.

(Sorry - have a very hectic day. Start to write, something comes up, come back and add a few words, something comes up… I think this reply as been here two hours.

#15

I use some of that too at times.

#16

Some people put 1-2 tomatoes into a stew even here, the same with capsicum but it’s not a mandatory ingredient, only onion and a lot of paprika are.
The only exception is egg stew, I learned that to make with a lot of tomato puree (and onions, obviously). Well I quickly stopped eating that carby dish even when I just wanted to close to carnivore :smiley: Almost everything in it is carby, not like I personally care about animal sugars nowadays, they never felt bad to me. If I ever wanted to stay below 20g carbs, I would need to eat the original egg stew very carefully! I still kind of did and quickly swapped the tomato puree with sour cream and it worked. I did the same with deviled eggs, by the way. As we made one kind and it contained tomato puree. The sour cream made it way fattier as it had only the egg fat before but it’s still fine.

If we manage to get enough eggs again, we should make egg stew. I will have off days anyway as it’s fruit season. My attitude is not eating non-carni food when I am perfectly fine with my carni one and my SO is fine without stew too. It’s still lovely now and then.
I wonder if I can combine eggs and meat in a stew with success… :thinking: I like variety even in a single dish sometimes.

Onion and tomatoes are great, I kept them for long even after trying out carnivore and liking it. I don’t need to be pure carni, being close is fine and these 2 are very good both with meats and eggs. And a little goes a long way especially in the case of onions. I still barely ever use them, I evolved and lost the need almost completely. It merely makes my cooking easier, I cook for a high-carber who still adores vegs. And no way I cook veggie dishes, vegs don’t even have a space in the freezer/fridge. Only the ones we eat raw, they are essential.
If I cooked a stew without the mandatory elements, it wouldn’t fly. More for me but I like when my SO eats well too. (And if it has no onion and paprika, I just fry or roast it, better.)