Slow cooker braised beef with horseradish

This blog post was written a while ago. I'm just posting it now.

Tonight we are celebrating our 12th wedding anniversary with a dinner and while usually we head out to some favorite restaurant this year we have decided to cook at home and pop open a really nice bottle of wine with a few episodes of our favorite TV show. Tomorrow night, as the second part of our celebration ... well, actually third part, as we have already started last night with a fabulous bottle of wine which The Boy blogged about here, we are going to watch the new Star Trek movie at the cinemas as a special treat to me.

We were talking this morning about what to cook for dinner and I had The Boy hand over a cook book that was lying on top of the dining table.

We recently went to our favorite discount book store, that has a ton of cook books on sale and I picked up a slow cooker and casserole cook book. This one is called Best Ever Slow Cooker One Pot and Casserole Cookbook by Catherine Atkinson and Jenni Fleetwood.

I went to the "slow cooker meat" section and flipped through a few pages. I eat with my eyes and love my cook books with lots of pretty pictures. One caught my eye and also sounded good, so I asked if The Boy would like it for dinner. I knew that I wanted a slow cooker dish.

This is Braised Beef with Horseradish, slow cooked.

Here's the RECIPE for it:

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoon plain flour
• 4 x 175g braising steaks (I used what we call chuck casserole steaks from the grocery store)
• 2 tablespoon sunflower oil
• 12 small shallots, peeled and halved
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 2 teaspoon dark muscovado (molasses) sugar (I used Golden Syrup)
• 2 cups near boiling beef stock
• 1 tablespoon Worchestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoon creamed horseradish
• 225g trimmed baby carrots, trimmed
• 1 bay leaf
• salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoon chopped fresh chives to garnish
• roast vegetables to serve

Instructions:

• Place the flour in a large flat dish and season with salt and pepper. Toss the steaks in the flour and coat.
• Heat the oil in a pan and quickly brown the steaks on both sides. Transfer them to the ceramic cooking pot.
• Add the halved shallots to the pan and cook gently for 10 minutes or until golden and beginning to soften. Stir in garlic, ginger and curry powder and cook for 1 minute more, then remove the pan from the heat.
• Tip the shallot mixture into the ceramic cooking pot, spreading it over the meat, and sprinkle with the sugar.
• Pour the beef stock over the shallots and meat, then add the Worchestershire sauce, horseradish, baby carrots and bay leaf. Stir to combine then season with salt and pepper. Cover the lid and cook on high or auto for 1 hour.
• Reduce the slow cooker to low or leave on author and continue to cook the stew for a fruther 5 - 6 hours or until the beef and vegetables are very tender.
• Remove the bay leaf from the stew and sprinkle with the chopped chives before serving with roast vegetables.

So, I don't have a slow cooker / crock pot and ended up using a cast iron enamel pot instead. I put the whole pot with the ingredients in it into the oven at 120°C for high and at 90°C for low. The temperatures suggested ranges between 120° to 90° C for high and between 90° to 70° C for low.

I thought it would be hard to stir and combine everything, so I mixed the stock, horseradish, sugar, Worchestershire sauce, salt and pepper together and just poured it into the pot.

I'm relatively new to slow cooking since it's not something The Boy is very fond of - he claims slow cooked food is mushy and tasteless. I'm trying to stay patient and not go poking and prodding at the food while it cooks, especially when it is to cook on low for 5 to 6 hours. We'll see how well I fare on that.

Oh yes, The Boy helped me to prep, and I had him peeling the onion shallots. I forgot to ask him to halve them, so they went in whole. I'm hoping that might be okay. The only thing I can think of that it would do to the onions is that it will not fall apart into the different layers in the cooking and will stay whole.

So this turned out to be very, very tasty. It has a slightly sweet flavor to it, but still very savory. I think the sweet comes from the sugar. I might try it without the sugar next time.

We loved this dish. It is a perfect winter dish, for a cold winter's night. We will probably serve it with mash potatoes next time. There was plenty of gravy to soak up which was just delish.

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