Beef Stew with Peppers and Tomatoes – Caucasian Style Recipe
Homemade beef stew is a dish for those who love meat. I make it in my own way, and braised meat with peppers often turns up on our menu. It is a hearty dish, similar to a veal or beef goulash, with plenty of sauce and stewed sweet peppers, seasoned with cilantro. Meat with peppers goes perfectly with mashed potatoes or simply with fresh bread.
I was inspired to make this beef stew by a recipe for an interesting Caucasian dish, buglama. It is often called the shepherds' dish. Buglama is made with lamb. Thinly sliced meat goes into a kazan together with tomatoes, onion, sweet and hot peppers, and after the spices are added, the meat and vegetables are stewed, literally left to simmer over low heat for a very long time. They say the smell of the fresh meat drove the whole neighborhood crazy.
Nowadays buglama is more often made with beef, at home, in a sauté pan. Made with beef or veal, buglama is somewhat like Hungarian goulash or bograch, though it is cooked without potatoes. By the way, goulash is considered the traditional food of Hungarian shepherds, and its consistency is closer to a thick soup. Beef stew is made from pieces of meat browned beforehand, just like goulash.
Veal or beef that is browned first and then stewed becomes tender and juicy. Big pieces of meat in a thick sauce of peppers, onion and tomatoes make a tasty boneless beef stew, fairly spicy and a little hot. The best part of the dish is that it is generously sprinkled with fresh cilantro, which makes the meat with peppers especially good.
Beef stew with peppers, onion and tomatoes is easy to make even at home. To give the sauce a pleasant tartness, we add tkemali, a homemade Caucasian sauce made from wild cherry plums.
Braised veal and beef usually take much longer to cook than pork, but the meat becomes tender and soaks up the flavor of the sauce, and that matters. Besides sweet peppers and tomatoes, it's worth adding garlic and hot pepper to the vegetables. Beef stew should be noticeably spicy, but not fiery like another well-known dish, chili con carne, which is also meat with peppers. I showed how to stew vegetables so they don't turn to mush in my vegetable stew recipe, and here is another option, meat stew with mushrooms.
Sides and sauces for meat
New Potatoes with Dill and Sour CreamBoiled new potatoes tossed with fresh dill, garlic and homemade sour cream, just like Grandma made them in the village. A simple early-summer side dish.
How to Cook BuckwheatHow to cook buckwheat in water: 1 cup of toasted groats to 2 cups of water, a short simmer and gentle steaming under the lid for fluffy, tender grains.
Homemade Horseradish with BeetHomemade prepared horseradish with beet juice, vinegar, sugar and salt. Fiery, bright pink and perfect with meat aspic, roast pork, fish and any meat.
Homemade SauerkrautCrunchy homemade sauerkraut in a 3-liter jar with just cabbage, carrots and salt. Step-by-step recipe with photos, ready in 1–1.5 weeks.
Tkemali SauceHomemade Georgian tkemali sauce from cherry plums with garlic, herbs and chili. Great with grilled meat and the sour base for kharcho soup. Keeps all winter.Ingredients
2 servings
- Beef 1 kg
- Tomatoes 0.5 kg
- Hot red pepper 1-2
- Sweet red pepper 2-3
- Onion 1
- Garlic 3-4 cloves
- Tkemali sauce 2 tbsp
- Cilantro 1 bunch
- Butter 50 g
- Salt, black pepper, hot pepper, coriander to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Beef stew turns out well with shoulder or rump: lean meat with a minimum of connective tissue and bones. It can be young veal or beef, but don't use old meat, as it is tough and takes a long time to cook. Though if you have the time, that's fine and the meat with peppers will still turn out great. If the meat was frozen, move it from the freezer to the fridge in advance. That way it won't leak juices while thawing.
- If you like, you can take more vegetables than listed. You definitely need different peppers, sweet and hot, plus onion and garlic. If you don't have ripe tomatoes, you can replace them with good homemade tomato juice. We make tkemali sauce every year from wild cherry plums, which are common in our forests, and it comes out spicy and tasty. It is a constant addition to kharcho and a sauce for meat, instead of tomato ketchup.
- For beef stew it is very important to brown the meat and vegetables well before you start stewing. Wash the beef, trim off the remaining fat and membranes, and cut out any bones and cartilage. Cut the meat into large pieces. Heat the butter in a frying pan and fry the pieces of beef in it until a golden crust starts to form.
- Peel the onion and cut it into strips. Fry the onion for 2-3 mins and, as soon as it turns soft, add the hot pepper, seeded and finely chopped. Fry the meat and vegetables for a few minutes. The vegetables should become soft, but not fry until they change color.
- Seed the sweet pepper and cut it into cubes. Add the pepper to the meat and fry until soft. Add the tkemali sauce, season with a little salt and black pepper, add 0.5 tsp ground coriander and more ground hot pepper to taste. Peel the garlic and chop it finely. Add the garlic to the meat and vegetables. By the way, tkemali sauce usually already contains all the necessary spices, so keep that in mind. Peel and seed the tomatoes, cut them into cubes and add them to the vegetables.
- Stir the beef and vegetables and add 1.5 cups hot water. Bring the liquid to a boil and cover the pan with a lid. Turn the heat down to the minimum at which it still simmers. Stew the meat with the vegetables until the meat is completely tender. Depending on its quality, beef can take up to several hours. But usually 1-1.5 hours is enough for the meat to become tender.
- If there is a lot of liquid in the sauce, you can reduce it by taking off the lid and turning up the heat. Taste the sauce and add spices if needed. Serve the hot beef stew on plates. Take the cilantro leaves only, chop them with a knife and sprinkle generously over the meat with peppers before serving.
| Yield: | 2 servings |
| Calories: | 118 kcal per 100 g |
| Prep: | 30 mins |
| Cook: | 1 h |
| Total: | 1 h 30 mins |
| Category: | Main Dishes › Meat Dishes |
| Cuisine: | Caucasian cuisine |
| Rating: |
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4.5
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