Ingredients:

2 lbs russet potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 1/2 lb cubed sirloin or stew beef  (can brown if desired, I didn’t bother)
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 onion, cut into quarter moon slices
1/3 cup chopped green olives with pimentos
15 oz canned stewed tomatoes (with juice!)
3 sprigs’ worth of thyme leaves
1 1/2 cup beef stock
1 bay leaf
1 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
3 cloves garlic, sliced
salt
freshly ground black pepper

to serve:

2 cups cooked white rice

Directions:

Place all ingredients (except the rice!) in a 4-quart slow cooker. Stir. Cook on low for 8 hours. Stir.

Serve with rice.

Yield: 4-6 servings

My thoughts:

I bought my first digital slow cooker ta month or so ago. I have a ton of slow cookers thanks to creating 300 recipes for my healthy slow cooker cookbook but all of them are the traditional, manual kind.  When I was writing the book, I didn’t want to assume that people had what was then, the newest in slow cooker technology. The manual ones work fine, but I have to admit I was curious about the programable kind. I couldn’t bring myself to buy one when I already had so many.

Then my trusty 4-quart oval died a year or so ago so when I saw one on sale for only $25 at Target that was programable, I ran right to the store. Four-quart slow cookers, especially oval-shaped,  are surprisingly difficult to find (the 6-7-quart models are more popular) but they are perfect for making food for smaller families. You don’t always want chili for 10! I can’t find it online for purchase but it’s this (Rival) Crock-Pot brand and has a digital display to choose any cooking time (in 30-minute increments) you want then it automatically changes over to warm when the time’s up. Oval pots are great because you can stick a whole roast in there horizontally but you can also make soups or stews in them.

I’ve been trying to avoid grocery shopping–last week to avoid Thanksgiving crowds and this week to try to use up some ingredients I already have–and had a package of stew meat and a ton of potatoes (it was cheaper at Aldi to buy 10 lbs of potatoes than 5 when I last shopped on 11/22) on hand. I seem to be coming down with a cold so what better way to make dinner than in the slow cooker? I could manage cutting up some potatoes and onions and then relied on other simple ingredients I had for flavor. I had a jar of “salad olives“, a can of stewed tomatoes I impulsed bought for 47¢ and of course a big jar of smoked paprika. In to the slow cooker it went!

While it was cooking I was looking up stew recipes (because why do that before you make dinner??) I came across a recipe for the Cuban dish Carne con Papas (literally just meat and potatoes) that has beef and potatoes along with a few other ingredients that seems to vary from raisins to wine but also frequently includes olives and/or tomatoes. It’s commonly served with rice, something I never would think to do with stew, but it sounded like a good way to stretch the stew out into a couple extra meals. So we fired up the rice cooker and served some rice along with the stew. It was really good! The stew was richly flavored but not very heavy and the rice made it a filling meal. Sick day food does not have to be sad food!

  commissions may be earned through affiliate links