Thieves’ Stew – the recipe

I know there are quite a few versions of Thieves’ Stew “out there,” but this one wins as one of the easiest and tastiest. Our granddaughter took a generic recipe and modified it quite a bit to get her own original recipe, which she is okay with me sharing here. Perfect winter fare – cozy, hot, and substantial – and easy to make in a pot or (preferably) a slow cooker.

First, let’s gather the ingredients for a great meal!

Ingredients:

• One to two-pound cut of beef, like a roast. We used a small 1-lb eye of the round roast. Any fairly lean, boneless cut of beef should work. A larger cut of meat will make an even meatier stew. Depending, you might be able to use something like flank steak, as the long, slow cooking time should make it very tender. I advised her to choose this one as I have used them many times in other recipes; they are lean, and the meat quality is great.
• Vegetable oil for browning the meat.
• 1/2 large onion, cut up into small pieces (not minced)
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and cut into a few pieces
• 8-10 medium to large mushrooms, quartered (regular white mushrooms from the store are fine, although you could probably use the brown cremini mushrooms also). We used white mushrooms, the ordinary ones sold in packs or loose at most groceries.
• 1 stalk celery, washed well and strings removed. Cut into 1/2 inch pieces or smaller. It will pretty much cook down, but if you don’t want a piece of celery to pop up occasionally in your bowl, then cut slightly smaller slices of the celery. We used the larger ones and it worked well.
• 2 cans Cream of Mushroom soup (not diluted)
• Beef broth or beef stock – 4 cups
• Salt and pepper to taste – Because you are adding beef stock or beef broth, which often contains salt, don’t put too much in before seeing how it tastes when it’s close to done. (see instructions)
• Egg noodles – medium or wide. 1-3 cups dry. We used medium, but I think wide would also be a nice choice for this meal.

Now that you have everything ready, it’s time to put the stew together and cook!

Directions:

1. Trim any large amounts of fat from the meat. It’s fine to have a little left on to enrich the stew.
2. Brown the cut of meat nicely in hot oil on all sides. I feel that browning meat before slow-cooking is important, but I know that many folks don’t do that. If you are pressed for time, I imagine you could skip the browning part, but the product may not come out exactly as hers did.
3. Place meat in slow cooker.
4. Sprinkle the meat generously with salt and pepper.
5. Cut up the onion (coarsely chop, not too fine), garlic, and celery. Add to slow cooker around the meat.
6. Add 2 cans Cream of Mushroom soup.
7. Pour in 4 cups of beef stock or beef broth. This recipe used cartons (which contain 4 cups) from the local grocery.
8. Stir to mix.
9. Set slow cooker on HIGH (use your own judgment regarding the temperature setting, as all slow cookers aren’t the same – we used a Rival CrockPot)
10. Cook approximately 8 hours, depending on the individual slow cooker.
11. Open the cooker and use a fork to shred the meat.
12. Stir gently to mix.
13. The last step – Add the noodles to the stew. You will want to make sure they are down in the liquid, but don’t worry – they will cook down into it as long as they are in the liquid. Cook until noodles are the correct texture. My granddaughter used medium egg noodles and they cooked in the slow cooker about 20 – 30 minutes max. If it’s bubbling nicely it may not take that long, so watching them carefully is highly recommended in order to avoid over-cooking the noodles.
14. Serve in bowls, perhaps with some warm crusty bread. Enjoy!

If you try it, let us know how it turns out!