Eat. Write. Dream. Stitch.: Summer Slow Cooking - Swiss Steak Stew with Home Canned Tomatoes

Monday, August 15, 2016

Summer Slow Cooking - Swiss Steak Stew with Home Canned Tomatoes

Isn't Monday a great day to come home to a nice, delicious, one pot meal, already made for you?
If you don't have a personal chef (and who does, right?), then let your crockpot do the work. It just takes minutes in the morning to prep everything, and you are good to go!
Today's recipe -- I call Swiss Steak Stew. I actually combined traditional ingredients from Swiss steak and stew - so there you go!

I have a scrapbook recipe book I put together--I've added favorite recipe clippings with washi tape, written recipes into it, and now I actually use it a lot! With this particular recipe, I've made it so many times, I've tweaked the ingredients in order to use my home canned tomatoes which gives it such a great garden flavor! But you can also use canned stewed tomatoes from the store. You can use one or two cans, depending on the consistency you prefer.

Swiss Steak Stew
2 T. oil
1 to 1 1/2 lbs. beef stew meat
1/2 cup flour
4 potatoes, peeled and quartered
small bag baby carrots
1/2 large onion, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 pint jars canned tomatoes, chopped
1 12-oz. jar beef gravy
Coat steak with flour and brown in hot oil. Remove from skillet and drain. Place potatoes, carrots and onion in bottom of stoneware. Place steak on top of vegetables and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour tomatoes over meat. Cover and cook on low 6 to 8 hours or on high 4 to 5 hours.

The beef browns in no time at all because you're not cooking it all the way through. It will have plenty of time to cook in the slowcooker. I love cooking everything in ceramic pans now--totally hooked on them! You don't have the dangers of peeling teflon, yet they don't stick and clean up so easy. And...they're pretty! This is a Cuisinart ceramic pan.