Use Leftover Roast Beef For A Richer Stew

Roast beef is a labor of slow-cooked love, resulting in a tender, juicy cut along with a decadent gravy made from its drippings. If you have any leftovers, you might opt to serve them over salads or simply heat them up to enjoy along with leftover mashed potatoes. However, once you repurpose leftover roast beef into a stew, you'll never want to make beef stew from scratch again.

Not only will the leftovers save you the time it takes to prep and cook raw meat, but it'll also upgrade the flavor and texture of the beef and the stew as a whole. Just as chilis and stews are even tastier after to heat up and enjoy the next day, the juices and seasonings in roast beef will likewise concentrate and bloom into even more flavorful chunks of meat for a beef stew. Plus, you can also use any leftover gravy to season and thicken your stew's stock. Stewing leftover roast beef will further tenderize it, so you'll get the most succulent, melt-in-your mouth texture. Consequently, you'll achieve the texture and flavor of a beef stew that's had time to sit and marinade for a few days in as little as an hour.

Using leftover roast beef will cut cooking times significantly, so you can prepare a beef stew even on a busy week night. For a hands-off method, make u in a slow cooker while you're at work or otherwise out and about. Like most stews, the most tedious part of cooking is the preparation — trimming and cutting raw meat and dicing various aromatics and veggies to accompany the beef and stock. Since leftover roast beef is seasoned and cooked, simply cut it into chunks. Then, you can build the stew by sauteing base ingredients like a mirepoix or Cajun trinity until fragrant, followed by seasonings, veggies, the roast beef, and finally the stock. 

If you want to streamline your preparation process even more, you can use pre-cut or frozen vegetables. Instead of peeling and chopping carrots, for example, you could simply add a bag of baby carrots. You can add raw French-cut green beans or a bag of tiny new or fingerling potatoes without ever having to use a knife. Beef or mushroom stock will enhance the umami-richness of the roast beef and infuse your vegetables with richness. You can also supplement the stock with a can of crushed or diced tomatoes for more umami and a chunkier cooking liquid. Try swapping beef stock for leftover gravy and water. To save overall cooking time, parboil potatoes or other heavier root vegetables in beef stock before adding them to the stew.