Beef Stewed with Vegetables

Name: Beef Stewed with Peppers, Onions and Tomatoes – Recipe
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 2 h
Cuisine: Bulgarian cuisine
Ingredients: Lean beef (shoulder or boneless meat) 0.5 kg; Sweet or mild peppers, small 300 g; Onions 2-3; Ripe tomatoes 2; Hot peppers 1-2; Vegetable oil 2 tbsp; Dried savory 0.5 tsp (or to taste); Salt, black pepper to taste; Water a few liters (for boiling the meat)

☆ 4.5

2 h

A wonderful, tasty dish: beef stewed with vegetables. Not with black pepper or paprika, the way goulash is made, but meat stewed with onions and bell peppers, sweet or only very mildly hot. There are plenty of mild pepper varieties, and their heat is often barely noticeable, which makes them very pleasant to eat.

Stewing is a cooking technique in which various ingredients are cooked with spices in a small amount of liquid (or even in their own juices) for quite a long time over very low heat. By the classic rules, the ingredients may be browned first. Stewing gives dishes a rich flavor and aroma. All sorts of vegetable or meat sautés, beef goulash and many sauces (the famous Bolognese, for example) are made by slowly stewing the ingredients.

Beef with bell peppers turns out exceptionally tasty, whatever the variety. You don’t have to use the usual large multicolored peppers. Capsicum, hot or sweet, is the fruit of an annual plant of the nightshade family, a relative of the tomato and the eggplant. What we call the “Bulgarian pepper” is a type of sweet pepper, and Bulgaria grows a great many sweet pepper varieties. You can find kamba, kapia, sivriya, ratund and others. They make an excellent mild appetizer.

The fruits of the mild, or very mildly hot, chorbadzhiyska chushka pepper are very pretty: very long, about 20 cm, thin, strongly curved and even twisted. I don’t know whether the name comes from the Bulgarian village of Chorbadzhiysko or from the word “chorba” (soup, a first course), but you will often see it called the chorbadzhiyski (soup) pepper.

Beef stewed with vegetables, made with pre-boiled meat and small or thin peppers, is a very tasty and flavorful dish. Simple spices typical of the Balkans make the meat stewed with peppers wonderfully aromatic. By the way, the dish can also be cooked in individual clay pots.

Ingredients

2 servings

Lean beef (shoulder or boneless meat) 0.5 kg
Sweet or mild peppers, small 300 g
Onions 2-3
Ripe tomatoes 2
Hot peppers 1-2
Vegetable oil 2 tbsp
Dried savory 0.5 tsp (or to taste)
Salt, black pepper to taste
Water a few liters (for boiling the meat)

Step-by-step recipe

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Choosing ingredients

Beef stewed with vegetables can be made with any sweet or mildly hot pepper.

Choose the peppers: it is better if they are small and compact, so you don’t have to cut them up. Cut peppers will most likely overcook and fall apart during stewing. You can always find suitable small sweet peppers at the market or in the store. Small kapia and rotund peppers are common. For this dish I bought some Bulgarian chorbadzhiyski peppers. They are thin and long. Besides, small peppers don’t need to be seeded.

Choose the beef: lean is preferable, shoulder or plain boneless meat, or even meat on the bone. Beef turns out tasty if the meat, which is fairly tough, is boiled first and only then stewed with vegetables. So you can use even fairly “old” meat: it becomes tender as it boils.
Beef slowly stewed with vegetables is a very tasty and filling dish that goes perfectly with red wine.

Boiling the meat

Wash the meat and trim off excess fat. Pour a few liters of water into a large pot and put in the meat. Bring to a boil and skim off the foam. Cook the beef at a very gentle simmer, covered, until the meat is tender. Depending on how tough the meat is, it may take 1-2 hours.
Take the cooked meat out of the broth, put it on a plate, cover and let it cool a little.
Strain the broth into a separate pot; you will need some of it for stewing.

Frying the meat with peppers

Peel the onions and cut them lengthwise into very large wedges, 6-8 per onion depending on size. Heat the vegetable oil in a sauté pan and fry the onion over medium heat until nicely golden and just starting to brown. Do not overcook the onion under any circumstances, or the dish will have a noticeable burnt taste.

Cut the slightly cooled beef into large pieces and add to the fried onion.
Add 1-2 whole hot peppers without seeding or cutting them. Season with salt and black pepper. Add dried savory to taste or, if you have it, a Bulgarian savory blend such as “trapezna chubritsa”. Savory gives meat dishes a wonderful spicy flavor, so use as much as you like. For example, I added 0.5 tsp of crushed dried savory. Stirring often, fry the onion and meat for 5 mins.
Add the whole sweet peppers and keep frying for another 5 mins.

Stewing

Blanch the ripe tomatoes in boiling water (for 1 minute), then remove the skins and seeds. Puree the tomato flesh and add it to the beef and peppers. Pour in a little of the strained broth so there is some free liquid for stewing.
Stew covered for 30 mins at a gentle simmer. Then remove the lid, turn up the heat and let the excess liquid evaporate. The consistency can be anything you like, from a thick soup to a sauté or ragout.

Serving

Serve piping hot. If you decide to keep a thin sauce, it is better to serve the meat in deep plates with a rim.
By the way, beef stewed with vegetables is somewhat like beef azu or Bulgarian yahniya, a wonderful dish. Stews are usually recommended to be sprinkled with herbs. That is up to you, but fresh toasted bread goes perfectly with the meat and vegetables, and besides, sauce with fresh bread is always delicious!

Calories and macros

775 kcal

Serving ≈ 570 g

Protein54 g29% of kcal
Fat51 g61% of kcal
Carbs20 g11% of kcal

100 g136 kcalProtein 9.5 gFat 8.8 gCarbs 3.4 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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