1.4M views · 7.5K comments | Beef Stew | By Cooking with Brenda Gantt | Hey, Facebook friends. It's cold. It's gray. It's raining. It looks terrible in Andalusia today and they had the little uh cancer freeze today and II hate that that happened today to be the weather it is but you know what? We just can't control the weather, can we? Uh but anyway, it's since it's this kind of weather, I have just got to have some beef stew. So, what I did is I bought me a chuck roast and I I've been cutting it up and uh y'all can watch me cut it up for a little while but and I'm leaving the fat on it because I love the fat. In my beef stew, this is a lot better than um cutting it up any other way. Just cut it in little cubes and then I'm gonna put the whole thing in there and I bought me some carrots and potatoes. Well, I didn't buy the potatoes today. Actually, I already had those. I tried to keep those in and uh but I did buy the carrots and I bought me some tomatoes. I bought the two real big cans of the diced tomatoes. That's what I bought and um I have onions. I always keep onions on hand. So, I've got that. So, if you're hungry, today and you're in the north and you can't even get out to go buy any stuff. You you can make a soup out of whatever you've got, darling. You don't have to have anything special to make soup. That's the good thing about soup and casserole. You just throw it in there with something and make you something out of it. Invent something. Um but if you've got any kind of meat at all, you don't even have to have meat in it but if you do have some meat in it, meat. If you've had some chick in it or some some kind of pork or maybe just a slice of bacon or two or a ham bone or something and just put that in your pot and look and see what kind of vegetables you've got. I'm sure you've got some around there and you can make your soup out of what you've got. If you've got celery or if you've got um if you don't have any tomatoes, um you don't have to put tomatoes in it, it can be a white-colored soup. Um if you've got um if you don't have potatoes, you could put some noodles in it or a little bit of rice in it, that would be good. You can make a soup out of anything and if you um you know, they always say that's a sign of a good cook. When you look at the refrigerator and find absolutely nothing and all of a sudden, you got soup. Do y'all remember that? It's a little children's story that kids used to read a long time ago and I read it to my children when I was teaching school. I read it to him. It's called stone um stone soup. Stone STONE like AA rock, okay? And so, they they it was about this little village that they were all hungry in this village and nobody had anything to eat. They were just starving to death in this little village. So, this guy in the village, he gets him a big black pot, builds a fire under it outside and puts water in it. Well, one of the neighbors came by and said, what are you doing? He said, well, I'm hungry. So, I'm gonna make me some stone soup. She said, what's that? He said, well, you see this stone right here in my hand. He had a nice round rock that was all smoothies and I'm gonna put it down in this water and I'm gonna boil it and I'm gonna make me something to eat. So, she looked at him and she said, well, she said uh uh I've got one potato at home. He said, well, go get it. So, she did. She went and got it. And then, somebody else curious walked by and they said, well, they had an onion. He said, they said they didn't have anything else but they had one onion. He said, go get it. So, they did. One person had a carrot and one person had a pea. Now, I'm just talking about little pea. He said, go get it. So, they did and so everybody in the village had some little something that wasn't anything really and they brought, everybody brought their uh their um what they had and they put it in that pot. And they cooked it and it that's the flavor of the water was delicious and the potato cooked up and cook and covered it was all in the pot. The carrot was all in the pot. The onion was all in the pot. And by the time everybody in the little town brought all their stuff, everybody was full. Everybody was happy. And you know what? That shows what we can do together as a community or as a state or as a nation. If we all work and do and do the best we can and help one another, look what happens. Look what happens. We all succeed. We all are blessed. We all are full and we're all happy. So, that's the moral of that little story. My children at school loved it. I loved it too. It's like um anything else in life. If we help one another, everything turns out better. Well, I'm gonna finish cutting this up and um then I'm gonna clean my carrots and I'll be back on with y'all in just a minute, okay? Okay, I finished my meat. I put it in my big pot of water and I have um peeled my carrots. I was gonna show you um uh take the carrot. II know y'all do this. I buy that big bag of the big carrots. That's what I buy. The raw carrots and I just um you just you just do like this and peel em off. I know that you all time cooks like me, y'all know how to do this and some of the little new people that just get married, they might not know how to do it. So, um that's the reason I'm showing. You know, it says in Bib did the Bible that the older ones are to teach the younger ones. And so then you uh reach care at all. And then, you just cut the um both ends of it off. Put that to the side and then, chop it up like that and you got your little circles, okay? So, that's what I'm fixed to do. Trapeze. I love the carrots and it to me that makes it taste really good. I remember you people in the north. Y'all um some of y'all are having an ice storm and I remember um one time here in Andalusia, we had an ice storm. It's a rare, rare, rare occurrence occurrence here but we did. We had an ice storm and on that particular day, uh that we had. You know, the south, we don't, we're not accustomed to like that. We don't know what to do, okay? We're we just don't know what to do. Our our pipes freeze. I mean, it's bad news around here when something like that happens but it anyway, when we had it, my husband was having to go to a some kind of policing school. I don't remember exactly what he had to go to um and he left me here with two babies, two children. They weren't big at all. They must have been uh maybe six and four or something like that and they were little and um so um he he thankfully, he didn't, we didn't know we're gonna get an ice storm and he had put all the wood that he had cut for the fireplace on the front porch which is close to my um close to my fireplace so that could keep the kids warm. Well, the the 2 days later that ice storm hit and y'all I'm telling you, the electricity of course went off. If we don't have electricity, we're only well water so we didn't have any water. We didn't have any lights. All we had was that fireplace. Y'all ever heard that uh the song country folks can survive. Well, I survived that. I just got I came in here and um I got me a big old black Dutch oven looking thing. I've got me a fire going in that fireplace. I brought the dog in the house. I took a mattress off of a bed and drag it into the den where the fireplace was. The house was freezing. I took some bisque queen that I had and a staple gun and I stapled all the windows up with bisque queen in that den and I put a enclosed the den off from the rest of the house. And I took that black pot and I got me some um ice from outside and I had some milk and different things and I made me a pot of stew out of nothing and I drag out the playing cards and I taught my children how to play G and Rummy. Do you all know how to play that? That's a fun card game and we sat there and we on that mattress with the dog in our blankets and our father Skew and for three or four days, we didn't have electricity and so for three or four days, we played gin rumming. I told them how to do it. Even though they were little, they learned out. We had a good time. George came back and I was on my, when he got back, I was on my last stick of wood. That's all I had left. I don't know what I've done after that. I guess I would have burned up some chairs or something. Whatever I had to do to keep my babies warm and living, that's what I would do. Okay, there we go. Alright, we got this and we've got our meat. Uh here's my big pot right here. This big pot is what I'm cooking it in and there's my steam coming out. It's about ready to boil. And um anyway, when I went to the grocery store today, I got to thinking about um there was this this this family behind me. And they had a lot of kids and everything. That was a bunch of them. But I couldn't have noticed what they were putting up on the area to check out because I was in front of them and I was trying to check out. They were already putting their stuff up there. Y'all everything they bought was in a box. I'm telling you there were there was nothing like carrots or a piece of meat. It was boxed up, boxed dinners, box this, box that and I thought to myself. Y'all are spending so much money on this pre-boxed stuff. If you just bought what I bought, you could feed your family for days. Uh oh. You know, I'm I'm always shocked. I'm always shocked that uh people who I don't know what people spend their money on. It's really none of my business what they spend their money on but y'all, if you're having a hard time, you need to stay away from boxes. Because that is not how to save. You can't save by boxed foods. They're expensive. It's cheaper to buy real food and chop it up. Like a anyway. Alright, I'm gonna turn you off a few minutes. I'm gonna get my onions and my potatoes ready. Okay, I've got all the potatoes peeled but one to save it out to show you what I do and I've I'm fixed to cut up these onions. So, here's here's the one potato I've got. For all y'all who don't know, which I know all of us older when you know, you always put potatoes in water and when you're cutting them up and that helps them not to turn dark and what I'm gonna put in mine are some of these um Idaho potatoes right here and so, what I do is uh wrong now. What I do is I just peel em um real quickly. It didn't take me long to do it uh but I didn't want you to have to watch me peel a bunch of potatoes this morning this afternoon. Can y'all see how gray it is outside? I'm telling you. Band news. I just, when I get through peeling mine, what I do is I just, I cut mine down this way and then, I cut them this way and that way, when I get ready to cut them, I just do like that and they're all in nice little cubes and I can cut them the exact same size. So, I'm not gonna put these in my stew until my carrots are almost done because potatoes cook so much quicker than carrots do that they'll just cook to nothing. I peeled peeled the onion. There's the two ends of it and what I do is um think it doesn't have to be cut any particular way. I'm just gonna cut mine in some quick little cubes. I kinda want kinda fattish. Like that. I'm gonna go ahead and put these onions in so they will be um seasoned and everything up. It smells so good in my kitchen and I know y'all are cooking something good tonight too. I love what y'all cook. I'm telling you y'all, there's a good cooks out there. I'm gonna cook some cornbread to go with it tomorrow. And I'll when I do that, I'm gonna the children come over tomorrow and I will have this soup. I'm gonna eat some of it tonight but there'll be plenty left for them for tomorrow cuz it's gonna be a big old thing of it. And I think I'm gonna fix some Mexican cornbread to go with it. So, tomorrow I will try to do that. And y'all can watch and see how I do my Mexican cornbread. I bought me three real pretty um jalapeno peppers today to put in it. Look how pretty these are. See? This is the jalapeno peppers. That'll be good. It's a cornbread one. Okay. So, I'm gonna put my onions in in my stew and uh get that going. This little scraper thing right here was a gift from uh one of my sweet Facebook followers and I have really enjoyed it. I've never had one before. This is my first time. I'm gonna just leave these right here and I'm gonna put those in later, okay? Here's my pot. Um right here and I am going to put in. I bought two cans of uh the diced tomatoes and I'm gonna put those that in there. I love tomatoes in mine. Diced tomatoes. And we'll stir it around a little bit and then, I don't have to do anything else. You see how big this potty is? Well, the stuff comes to right there. That's where it comes to. Right there. And I haven't got my potatoes in it yet. So, you know this is gonna feed the crowd. And it's gonna be mighty good. I'm gonna put in salt and pepper for my um seasoning as far as my spices go and you could put a little garlic, clove in it. It would be good or some other spices. You could this and it'll be so good. Make your soup tonight or tomorrow. Out of whatever you can find. Put something that you would never suspect to put in there and it'll be good y'all. It's gonna be good. Talk to y'all later. Love you. Buh bye.
We think you’ll love these