Beef with orange, prunes, cumin and vegetables

[highlyeccentric]

Crossposted to crock_o_dial

Note: this recipe is delicious, but not ideal for those who expect crockpot cooking to be simple. I made a huge mountain of dishes doing the prep-work in the morning (but at least I could go out and know I was coming home to delicious noms all set to go!).


This recipe is: Nut-free, lactose free (assuming your stock doesn't contain either of those)
This recipe requires: A *lot* of faffing about chopping, preparing meat and vegetables, juicing things, and frying the base ingredients.
This recipe doesn't require: If you swing it right, you could manage this without having to lift any of the hot pots.


- about 1/3 of a cup of plain flour
- Around a kg (give or take 100g) of stewing beef, cut into pieces around 1inch cubed
- oil for cooking
- 2 large brown onions, thin sliced
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 tsp ground tumeric
- 2 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 to 2 cups fresh orange juice
- 1 to 1 1/2 cups beef stock
- around 8 eschallots (wikipedia link because of severe dialectal confusion surrounding the word shallot), with outer skin removed, and halved.
- 1 cup pitted prunes
- 1 or 2 carrots, diced
- a couple of handfuls of green beans, trimmed

Note: measurements are in Australian cups (250ml) and tablespoons (20ml). Liquid measurements are a bit vague since in my experience it depends on your slowcooker and exactly how big/small you cut your meat. And how thick you like your gravy.

Method:

1. Place flour in a medium bowl, season generously with pepper and salt. Use to coat the beef.
2. Take a frying pan or large pot, heat cooking oil and fry the beef in batches, transferring to slow cooker as you go.
3. Place onion in pan and fry until soft and starting to caramelise. Add tomato paste, turmeric and cumin and stir for 1 min or until fragrant.
4. While the onion is happening, add eschallots, prunes, stock, and orange juice to the beef.
5. Tip the onion mixture into the slow cooker. Stir well.
6. Cook on high for a few hours, and then low for the rest of the day. (It'd probably be fine on low all day if you put it on before, say, 10am)
7. About half an hour before you want to eat, add carrots. About fifteen minutes before, add beans and turn back to high.

Serve with a side such as mashed potato or polenta.

The stew starts out radioactive orange, but darkens as the beef juices spread through the sauce. It should serve around six people - and I'm planning on turning the leftovers into beef pie, nom nom nom.

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ashen_key, the recipe for chilli and pine nut pasta is here.