Crockpot Beef Stew

It's Crock Pot Wednesday over at Dining with Debbie, and Slow Cooking Thursday over at Diary of a Stay at Home Mom!

I didn't have any crockpot meals planned, but I did have beef stew on the menu... I've never made it in the crockpot, but I figured why not give it a try?

It turned out great, better than usual!! Click here for the printable version.

Here is what I used:

Carrots, Potatoes, Corn, Celery, Onion, Water, Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper, Paprika, Flour, 2lbs Stew Meat and of course a Packet! This one is McCormick Beef Stew - it is by far my favorite!!

First, prepare the meat to be seared, to do this, get a big plastic bag and put enough flour in it to coat, add salt, pepper, and paprika:

Shake it around to mix, then add the beef to coat it:

Then add olive oil to the crockpot, if you don't have a crockpot that can go on the stove, use a pan for this step, or if you decide to not use the crockpot, use the pot you are going to cook it in. Get the oil very hot and add the beef in, don't worry about getting a little extra flour in with it, it'll make the stew thicker (and we like it that way!):

I used to be a real perfectionist about this step, I would only add a little bit of beef at a time and get it all perfectly seared. That took too long and made a big mess, so I finally gave up the perfectionist behavior and now I just add it all at once, it works out fine, here it is after about 5 minutes:

That's good enough for me, so now add enough water to cover it, take it off the stove and put it in the crockpot base and then mix your packet in:

Mix it all together and add salt and pepper to taste:

I chopped up all my veggies while my beef was searing, so they are all ready to go. As usual I made my trademark onion mush, and I added a stalk of the celery to it as well (I'm not a big fan of crunching into celery either), so I add that in first:

 Then add the carrots, potatoes, celery, and corn:

My crockpot was getting pretty full right about now, I used too many potatoes, next time I'll cut it down to about 4 instead. So I mixed it all in and added a little more water:

Then I covered it, set the crockpot to low, and let it cook for around 7 hours, stirring when I thought about it. I probably should have stirred it a bit more as some did end up sticking to the bottom, but it wasn't enough to ruin the meal so I wasn't too worried about it.

7 hours later, I popped some refrigerated biscuits into the oven and served up dinner:

It turned out delicious, nice and thick gravy and the meat was very tender, much better then when I cook it on the stove top. I love my crockpot!!!

Here's the printable version for you! Let me know if you try this!

Love and Luck to you,

The Packet Queen