Here’s Jenn Segal’s Classic French Beef Stew. It’s on my wintertime cookery list. I love that it’s largely “hands off and make ahead” — as Jenn describes it.
We make a Flemish Beef stew called Stoovers (I’ve no doubt I spelled that wrong) with onions, carrots, and Belgian beer. There’s no potatoes in it, as you serve it with frites on the side. It’s delicious! (And as a side note, having an air frier is a game changer for warming up leftover fries from a restaurant — they taste so good and we don’t have to try to actually fry them and make a mess in the kitchen!)
Our Belgian relatives gave us a kinda sketch of a recipe for the Stoovers. With European measurements. lol. We winged it and put the process on Facebook. Then all our relatives living Bruges commented what we did right and wrong. It was such a fun interaction and really nice memory! Then we made it a few more times to “perfect” it. But it always tasted good, even that first one where we were really winging it. lol.
As delish as our Flemmish stew is, I’m looking forward to this classic French recipe, with some American measurements. lol.
We haven’t made it yet. But it looks divine! Let us know in the comments if you make it! I think this is the most popular thing on the Once Upon a Chef blog!
xx, Jen-Marie
p.s. Here’s an affiliate link to Jennifer Segal’s first cookbook. I actually purchased it a year before it was released. I remember her writing, asking for people to pre-order, because she wanted it to be a NYT bestseller. She said “a girl can dream right”? And guess what?!! It became one!!!
