Homestyle Beef and Vegetable Stew in Clay Pots

Name: Beef Stew with Vegetables in Clay Pots (Zharkoye)
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 2 h
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Boneless beef 400 g; Water 1 l; New potatoes 4-5; Carrot 1; Garlic 1 head; Bell pepper 1; Tomato 3; Salt, black pepper, savory, bay leaf, parsley to taste

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2 h

I don’t know about you, but I have always loved meat with potatoes. It doesn’t matter how the dish is cooked, as long as there is plenty of meat and plenty of potatoes. The ideal proportion is roughly equal parts of each. My special favorite is beef with vegetables.

Braised meat with vegetables and new potatoes is the best dish of early summer. Braising is something between boiling and frying: it happens in a small amount of liquid, and often with no added liquid at all, only the juices the ingredients release, in their “own juice” or, which is very tasty, in wine.

Braising takes more than half an hour and is always done over low heat. The best-known braised dishes are ragout, sauté, goulash and, of course, the famous “tushonka”. Braising is almost the perfect way to cook tough, fibrous ingredients. The toughest beef or game turns tender while braising, soaks up the aroma of the spices and gets an exceptional flavor.

I consider beef the most suitable meat for braising. Beef is rather difficult to handle. How the meat is cut determines how it should be cooked. Of course, you shouldn’t make cutlets or ragout from cuts meant for steaks or roast beef. You can always find a more suitable cut that is, by the way, much cheaper.

For broth, it is better to take the hindquarter with the bone, or the shank. For cutlets, use the tenderloin, and for borscht, brisket or neck, which is a bit fattier and gives a richer broth. Kholodets (meat aspic) is always made from the shank and hoof, which contain the most gelatin.

For braising, the hindquarter or brisket is ideal. The less tough the meat you start with, the tastier the beef with vegetables will be.

It is best to braise meat in a ceramic pot. In many cuisines around the world, the ceramic cooking pot is part of the cultural tradition. In the Balkans, for example, cooking in a pot (guvech) makes up a significant part of the cuisine. The famous Bulgarian yahnia stews cook exceptionally well in a ceramic pot. Or my favorite dish of Bulgarian cuisine, “sirene po shopski”: brynza cheese baked in a ceramic pot with savory.

Even if you don’t set out to make something well known, strictly by the recipe, and simply put chopped vegetables into a pot, add fragrant spices and pour in a mixture of wine and water, the result will surely be a masterpiece after cooking. Beef with vegetables is made just like that: simply and without any special tricks. By the way, food hardly ever burns in ceramic cookware.

More with beef and potatoes

Hungarian Beef Goulash with Potatoes and Paprika

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Rump Steak (Romsteak): Breaded Fried Beef

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New Potatoes Stewed with Beef

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Meat Stew with Mushrooms: Beef, Button Mushrooms and Potatoes

Ingredients

2 servings

Boneless beef 400 g
Water 1 l
New potatoes 4-5
Carrot 1
Garlic 1 head
Bell pepper 1
Tomato 3
Salt, black pepper, savory, bay leaf, parsley to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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How to boil the meat

Any lean beef flesh works well for this dish.
Prepare the meat: remove any bones and membranes, wash well and cut into pieces of about 50 g.
Boil the meat. Put it in a pot, pour in 1 liter of cold water and set over the heat. Add a few black peppercorns and a bay leaf, and salt. After it comes to a boil, skim off the foam and add the carrot cut into large cubes. Cover the pot with a lid and simmer over the lowest heat for about 1 hour, until the meat is tender.
If you use young veal, you can skip boiling the meat altogether.

How to prepare the vegetables

While the beef is boiling, prepare the vegetables. Peel the potatoes and cut them into large pieces. Without peeling, separate the garlic into cloves. Peel 1-2 cloves and leave the rest unpeeled. Cut the tomato in half, cutting out the core.
Peel the bell pepper and roast it on a grill pan until soft.

How to fill the pots

As soon as the beef is cooked, transfer the meat and boiled carrot to the clay pots, adding the unpeeled garlic cloves. Mash the peeled garlic cloves you set aside with a little salt and pepper (literally a pinch) and divide between the pots. Add 1-2 pinches of dried savory or a mix of aromatic herbs. Stir the contents.
Add the sliced grilled bell pepper. Add the potatoes. Place a tomato half in the center, cut side up.
Season lightly with salt and pepper. Pour the broth left from boiling the beef into each pot. You don’t need much broth: it is enough if the potatoes sit half in the broth. I used about 1/2 cup of broth (100 ml) per pot. Beef with vegetables is not a soup.

How to braise in the oven

Cover the pots with lids and put them into an oven preheated to 220-230°C. Since there is liquid in the pots, it will certainly boil away, so I recommend setting the pots on trays: ceramic or heatproof glass.
It is very hard to give an exact cooking time. The beef will only start to braise once the contents of the pots are heated through and the broth comes to a boil. Time 35-40 minutes from the moment it boils. By then the dish will be fully cooked, with very little liquid left.

Serving

The dish is served right in the pots. First wipe off any residue of the boiled-away broth with a napkin and set each pot on a suitable plate or saucer.
At the table, spoon the meat with vegetables onto your plate.
Sprinkle the dish with finely chopped parsley.

Calories and macros

750 kcal

Serving ≈ 1100 g

Protein50 g28% of kcal
Fat30 g38% of kcal
Carbs61 g34% of kcal

100 g68 kcalProtein 4.5 gFat 2.7 gCarbs 5.6 g

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

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