beef stew

One of the random things a friend passed down to me as he moved cross-country was a giant slow-cooker. I was reluctant to take it at first because it was heavy and had to be carried on a bus, but it seemed like such a shame to throw it out otherwise. Now I can say that it was totally worth the sore arms and bruises on my thighs, because this thing is freakin' awesome.

Beef stew is strangely one of my dad's favorite things to make. I say it's strange because he doesn't actually really like to eat it (he's not a fan of red meat). However I always enjoy it, and since I had been wanting to redeem myself from my last beef failure and had a lot of deteriorating veggies in my fridge, I decided that it was time to bust out the slow-cooker and take my own stab at this dish.

Lessons learned:

• You cannot prep/cut potatoes and leave them in the fridge for more than 2 days. Mold will grow and you'll be very sad as you throw out 2 whole potatoes and all the carrots that you happened to put in the same container.
• 4.5 hours on high heat is not enough to cook 2 lbs of beef. The meat was still pink when the timer went off, but as it was 12:30am at this point, I just took it out and cooked it on the stove-top the following day.
• In case you didn't know, you can slow cook radishes.

Gah I'm so in love. I'm not very good at cooking meat and the slow-cooker just makes it all so easy. I can now totally see why some people live off of slow-cooked dinners.