Alton Brown's Beef Stew Is Anything But Conventional

Beef stew is one of those comforting dishes that you make in layers. There are various recipes, from traditional beef stew to aromatic garlic ginger beef stew, but they all follow a similar protocol for execution; stews are one-pot meals that you cook in stages, eventually adding all the elements together to simmer and develop flavorful and textural complexity. However, celebrity chef and culinary scientist Alton Brown makes a beef stew that's characteristically out of the realm of conventional protocol.

In an episode of the popular Food Network show, "Good Eats," Brown brings new cooking methods and switches up the timing of his beef stew's assembly. Brown agrees with the concept that a stew is the sum of its parts, with each addition culminating in the final product. However, he spends a lot more time developing the parts separately, namely the beef itself.

Brown uses short ribs in his recipe, unlike more common cuts of beef like boneless flank, chuck, or skirt steak. Instead of browning the short ribs in the stew pot, Brown sears them on a cast iron griddle, then tosses them in a pasty marinade of Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, and smoky paprika before slow roasting them in an aluminum foil pouch at 250 degrees for four hours. This slow roast not only develops complex flavor, crispy skin, and juicy tenderness, but it also generates tasty juice and fat that Brown employs in the subsequent parts of the stew.

Instead of developing a complexity by adding seasonings and aromatics to the broth, Alton Brown's recipe relies on the meat for everything. The four-hour slow roast results in succulent meat as well as a bountiful runoff of juice and fat that he then uses to fry the veggies and starches and build the broth. Brown cuts a small hole in the aluminum pouch housing the short ribs to drain the juices into a container to place in the refrigerator so that the fat rises to the top of the liquid and solidifies. He plucks out the solidified fat, using a small amount of it as the rich and tasty foundation to fry onions and coat the potatoes.

The rest of the liquid is poured over the veggies along with water to create the stew's broth. Another uncharacteristic aspect of Brown's beef stew is that he waits to add the beef back to the beef stew instead of layering it onto the veggies and simmering it in broth. Since he uses short ribs, Brown de-bones them while the veggies and broth simmer. He takes kitchen shears to the short ribs to trim any fat or gristle from them before finally adding them to the stew pot. Once all the parts are combined, Brown only simmers the whole stew for an additional 10 minutes. While developing the meat takes time, it also consolidates the stew's list of ingredients and really amps up the beefy flavor.