Hearty Beef Stew

I LOVE a good one-pot hearty dinner in the fall and winter seasons, especially when it's cooking on the stove-top all day long. There is nothing like walking into the aroma of a delicious dinner getting better and better as it sits in your kitchen while you go about your day. I grew up eating my mom's delicious stew and for some reason I've never given it a try. I was at my friend Jenna's over the weekend and the topic of stew came up (we're so hip) and she shared a recipe she had with me. I took her recipe and changed it a bit with tips from my mom and it came out AMAZING.  It's so easy to make because it's a one pot dinner, the only thing you really need is time to let it slow-cook so the beef braises and becomes "fall off the bone tender".

Here is the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

2 lbs. of chuck meat, or stew meat
1 cup of red wine
(2) 8 oz. cans of Hunt's tomato sauce
(1) 12 oz. can of beef broth
1 medium onion
A few carrots sliced up into coins
2 potatoes (any kind) cut into 1-inch cubes
1 big bag of frozen mixed vegetables (I used the one with carrots, corn, string beans, and peas

Flour and salt the beef and make sure it is cut into bite size pieces. Brown the beef in a dutch oven in 3 tablespoons of butter and a little olive oil (do in batches).
Put the meat back into the dutch oven, add wine, and scrape the brown bits from the pot. Add the cans of Hunts and the can of beef broth and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and cook for two hours.
Add carrots, potatoes and mixed vegetables and let simmer all day for as long as you want, yesterday it was like 4 hours.

Serve with rustic bread and voila!!!