I had it all planned out. This was the last night of my 1 roast 3 meals challenge and I wasn’t going to let it kick my ass again. The first night was a marathon of beef cooking and the second was a chaotic pot pie experiment. Both nights I got distracted and both nights we ended up eating after 10 o’clock. But that wasn’t going to happen again. This time I had a plan.
Step 1: Where did I go wrong?
The last two night had a bunch of problems:
- Not reading the blog all the way through
- Not realizing the directions were flawed/missing
- Not having the right tools to do the job
- Thinking I could substitute the right tools for the ones I already had
- Not knowing how many hours the dish would have to cook for
Step 2: Corrections
For tonight’s meal I double checked off all my prior mistakes. I made sure their was a full and descriptive ingredient and direction list on the blog and I read it completely way before starting. Luckily the frustrating meal plan blog I had been using referred the last night’s instructions to a totally separate food blog and this one seemed Way more organized. There wasn’t any weird cooking tools I didn’t have and most importantly I knew way in advance how long the stew had to cook for.
Unfortunately that still meant the stew had to cook for 2 1/2 to 3 hours…
Step 3: Action Plan
I knew I couldn’t come home at 6pm and start cooking a stew for 3 hours (Brittney would kill me) so my plan was so come home at lunch and start the ball rolling on the stew in the slow cooker. Then when I got home from work, all I would have to do is make Polenta and I’d be eating in no time flat.
Plan vs Reality
Everything was going according to plan. I came home for lunch, diced up my remaining leftover beer and browned it in a pan. I added in the Chipotle peppers, Adobo sauce and beef broth and brought everything to a boil. Then I was supposed to turn to low and simmer for 3 hours but since I wasn’t going to be home to monitor it and I didn’t want to burn my house down (hypothetically) I moved everything to the slow cooker to reduce for the next 3 hours.
When I got home from work my house smelled amazing. Slow simmering stew and spices had filled the air with a mouth watering aroma. I was feeling so accomplished that I had finally learned from my mistakes and created an action plan to make this dinner a success.
Then in 5 minutes everything changed.
I checked the slow cooker and realized that the stew hadn’t stewed at all! It had souped… The slow cooker had perfectly cooked the beef to a nice medium rare but the sauce was still a brothy soup. It hadn’t reduced at all because the slow cooker was recycling the moisture back down in with the lid on…
As I panicked to try and figure out how to save my strew I got a call from my friend Drew Vincent. He in true friend form needed a favor. “I know you’re cooking,” he says, “but I’m wondering if you can stop cooking for just an hour to help me move a hot tub.”
“What!?” I said, confused and not really able to put two and two together.
Apparently Drew had found a hot tub on Kijiji for ridiculously cheap and was calling in all the troops he could muster to help him get it to his house that night.
‘Crap!’ I thought, not only is this terrible timing but I can’t really say no since Drew just came over and bailed me out 2 nights ago.
Reluctantly I agreed to help and Drew assured me it would only take less than an hour. He was going out there ahead with our mutual friend Wade who is an electrician to disconnect the tub. All I would have to do is show up and lift. This would actually work out okay since Brittney wasn’t off work until 8pm so I would still have plenty of time to get back and finish dinner.
Meanwhile I still had to do something about my mess.
I knew I couldn’t cook the beef much longer so I thought the best way to save this dish was to divide and conquer. I strained out the beef and moved it into a bowl to rest. The remaining stew I left in the slow cooker on high with the lid off in hopes it would reduce down while I was gone.
I left praying I had not just ruined my meal, and headed over to meet Drew and Wade.
When I got to the house I noticed something odd, I was the only one there. I called Drew to find out that he had been delayed so he was still 10 mins out.
I won’t get into the details of the move but suffice to say it was far more than 1 hour. We finished dropping the tub off at Drew’s place and before I left I racked Drew’s brain on how I could fix my mess of a stew. He suggested adding flour if it’s not already thickened when I get home.
Saving the stew
When I got back to my place the stew was not that much different than when I left it. I transferred the broth back to the sauce pan and turned it to high to reduce as I started on the Polenta. For all accounts the Polenta was fairly easy to make. I sauteed onions and bell peppers and then added the Polenta and some beef broth and let simmer for 20 mins.
The stew was still looking pretty soupy so I decided I’d try Drew’s flour trick. I added a half cup of flour directly into the boiling sauce and watched as it disolved. I gave it a stir and found that it had definitely added a thickness to the sauce, but it also added a bunch of little clumps.
I whisked and whisked but couldn’t for the life of me get rip of the clumps.
Brittney arrived home and I was still whisking like a mad man. She was a little frustrated to say the least once she heard the story of why we were eating at an unhealthy hour again.
I quickly added the beef back into the sauce and finished the Polenta. The beef fell apart as I mixed it around in the sauce and suprisingly the sauce finally started looking like a stew.
Brittney helped plate the Polenta and we poured the strew over top.
For those who’ve never had Chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce before, let me tell you, they give off a little bit of heat. That being said the Polenta was the perfect counter to the spicy stew and together they actually tasted really good.
Sometimes things don’t always go they way you plan but it’s how you handle the heat that defines how your efforts will turn out.
