Beef and vegetable stew

I’ve tried this stew in the slow cooker and it’s ok but I never get it tasting anywhere near as good as I do if I use the oven. I actually learnt how to use the timer on our oven for dishes like this! I’d do the prep, leave it in the oven while I went to work and it’d be ready when I got home!

Ingredients-

One large onion or two small ones

3 sticks of celery

3 carrots

One leek

10-12 mushrooms

3 bay leaves

Tsp dried thyme

Tablespoon of oil (rapeseed or vegetable)

25g butter (just substitute for more oil if you want to make it dairy free)

2 tbsp flour

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp tomato purée

100ml red wine

500ml beef stock

800g stewing beef (mine came from a local butchers)

Prepare the veg! Slice the onions and leek, chop the celery into 2 inch pieces, half the carrots lengthways then chop into 2 inch pieces, half the mushrooms (or leave whole if they’re smaller)

In a casserole dish melt the butter with the oil

Add the veg along with the bay leaves and thyme. Stir and cook on a medium heat for around 10mins to soften everything

Add the flour and stir until there’s no more white showing

Add the Worcestershire sauce and the tomato purée and stir in

Add the wine (if you’d rather not use wine just make up 600ml of stock instead)

Then the stock- stirring as you go

Throw in the beef (in large cubes) and bring to a gentle boil

Cover with a lid or foil if you don’t have a pot with a lid that fits

Put straight into the oven preheated to 160 degrees. Leave to cook for 3 hours. Take the lid off for the last 30mins and that will help to thicken the gravy