Tender Instant Pot Beef Stew
It is officially spring, although it seems the weather hasn’t quite caught up. It’s still a bit cold and wet here in sunny Southern California. What better way to cozy up on days like these then enjoy a hot bowl of beef stew.
Being moms to young kids mean the less time spent at the the stove the better. The instant pot has truly been a useful investment for our families. This hearty beef stew is a one pot meal that is delicious and easy to make. We like to eat this with a bowl of rice.
Requiring only a handful of ingredients, this stew is definitely a meal we default to often. We simply chop, dump and set. Then the meal cooks for itself while we take the kids outside to enjoy the fresh air.
What we love so much about this recipe is the fact that the only work we have to do is to prep all raw ingredients then pile them into the instant pot. There are instant pot stew recipes that require browning of the meat before the instant pot does its magic so of course we had to experiment. Browning the meat took quite a bit of time and left our stove top spattered with oil. In the end, the results were pretty much the same. The extra step of browning the meat didn’t significantly improve the flavor or texture of the stew. For a thicker stew and a caramelized look to the meat, you could always finish the dish in the oven.
For our thickening agent, we used small tapioca pearls. Tapioca pearls are often used in sweet Asian dishes like tapioca puddings and dessert soups. Adding it into the stew as a thickener further simplifies this dish by eliminating the need to make a cornstarch/flour slurry that is added after the stew is done cooking.
For fun, we decided to make pastry caps in the form of a turtle to top off our stew. The inspiration behind the pastry top came from my wedding. One of the things that the guests enjoyed and remembered the most was the minestrone soup covered in soft, fluffy puff pastry. To make these turtles, we used a ring mold to cut out circles of puff pastry which we scored with a knife to make the shell. Then we formed small dough balls to create the limbs, tail and head. We added two peppercorns for the eyes then assembled everything onto the bowl of stew.
That’s all there is to it! Now use that extra time to run some errands, play with the kids or binge watch your favorite show.
Tender Instant Pot Beef Stew
Ingredients
- 3 lbs beef chuck short ribs
- 1 large onion sliced
- 5 stalks celery cut into 1 inch chunks
- 8 carrots cut into 1 inch chunks
- 3 Tablespoons small tapioca pearls
- 1 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 1 Tablespoon ketchup
- 1 cup tomato juice
- 3 teaspoons salt
- 2 Tablespoons sugar
Instructions
- Cut beef, celery, and carrots into 1 inch chunks and slice onion.
- Add all of the ingredients into your instant pot and select the stew/meat setting (about 40 minutes on high pressure)
- When cooking is done, let the instant pot natural release for about 10 minutes before releasing pressure.