This recipe is from “The Arte of Cooking” which came with Tales of Zestiria the X dvd/blu ray set, and I won this in a raffle at Aselia con several years ago (not the blu-ray set, just the box and this booklet I guess). I discovered the booklet recently while looking through my zine collection, as I totally forgot about it, but it does contain recipes for foods from the videogame. Foods in Tales series have different properties, such as restoring health, and this looked very easy to cook with ingredients I have and would also feed me during lunch during the work week. The other recipes either contained cheese (which I’m not eager to eat again) or were super difficult to make, but I’m sure they would look prettier than a beef stew.
Ingredients Summary –available at any grocery store
- stew beef, red potatoes, canned tomatoes, carrots, celery (I used bell pepper), onions
- beef stock, garlic, salt, pepper, other seasonings to taste
Steps Summary – Literally the easiest because you’re using a slow cooker so you don’t even have to watch the pot.
Heat up oil and stir fry onions, carrots, celery, I actually browned the beef a little to add color. Then add all ingredients into slow cooker along with your preferred seasonings (they recommend mural of flavors, bouquet garni, rosemary, etc, I used rosemary and bay leaf.) Cook on high for 6 hours. Serve with crackers or crusty bread.
Taste Summary – flavorful, savory and somehow a little sour, but the bell peppers dissolved from being cooked too long
- Taste – even though the recipe said to add your own seasoning which makes you question how much, I just used my heart and added a teaspoon of dried rosemary and one bay leaf and a dash of garlic powder because I like garlic. This was a very tasty stew, with a surprising tartness from the tomatoes. Not really sure how that happened, I guess I didn’t use whole peeled tomatoes but just regular diced tomatoes? But I’ve never had tangy beef stew before with other recipes.
- Texture – I think 6 hours on high is too long honestly, it should be 4 hours high or 8 hours low like in other recipes. The bell peppers dissolved and are barely recognizable in the photo. But the beef was super tender and the other vegetables were soft but not too soft. I just bell peppers to replace any veggies I don’t like (in this case, celery).
Convenience Summary
Full marks for a slow-cooker recipe lol. I probably didn’t even have to try to brown the stew beef, but I did because that was in my previous beef stew recipe . As you can see in the photo, the meat wasn’t very browned but I tried. This was extremely easy and delicious and I will make it again, but I might cook it for just 5 hours high and of course, use another vegetable besides bell pepper, but I’m still dubious about celery so maybe I’ll just leave out that third vegetable completely.