This gorgeous slow cooker recipe provides you with a warming, tasty classic that’ll be ready for when you walk through the door after a long day.
It’s a healthy version too, created by DW Fitness Clubs who has come up with a number of delicious and nutritious recipes to get you through the autumn and winter months.
Ingredients (to make enough for 2-4 people)
• One large onion (chopped)
• Two cloves of crushed garlic
• 500g of lean diced beef
• Two bay leaves
• 350g of button mushrooms (you can use chestnut mushrooms if you want to be fancy!)
• One tsp of dried oregano
• One tsp of dried parsley
• Two tsp of fresh thyme
• One beef stock cube
• One swede (chopped into large chunks)
• 200ml of cold water
• One tbsp of olive oil
• One tsp of salt
• Cracked black pepper to taste
• A sprig of fresh tarragon to garnish
• Cornflour to thicken if needed
The night before
• Add your oil to a pan, before browning off your beef on a high heat. This should take five minutes. Don’t overcook the meat – you only need to sear it.
• Brown off your mushrooms and cook your garlic in the same pan.
• Add everything except the tarragon and cornflour into your slow cooker pot and place it in the fridge overnight.
The morning (just before you leave the house)
• Put your pot into the slow cooker and stir the contents.
• Place it on a low heat and leave for at least six hours.
• When you arrive later that evening, add some cornflour to your mixture if it requires thickening (mushrooms contain a lot of water, so you might find that the stew is a little on the runny side).
• Add tarragon as a garnish and ladle your scrumptious stew into a bowl.
The health benefits
Lean beef is a fantastic source of protein with 29g of protein in a 100g serving of 5% lean beef – all for just 193 calories. Mushrooms are also underrated from a nutritional point of view. As well as being full of vitamin D and B-vitamins, mushrooms are a strong source of selenium, which is thought to help protect our cells from damage that can cause chronic disease.
COMMENTS