“I said what?!” Stew

We have all had those days. You agree to cook. You forget to cook. There are consequences to be paid!

That is exactly what happen to me and my solution should provide you with a useful way to ease your cooking woes.

I regularly buy and freeze meat that is nearing the end of its expiration date. They are frozen in one solid lump, even thought they are prepped and cubed before they are frozen. They are also difficult to identify at times. It’s either pork or beef, but I am not sure which…

I did have time to thrown the mystery meet into a water bath for an hour or so, but it was only enough to show me that I was dealing with beef. It wasn’t enough to defrost it very much.

So my method was determined for me. It wold have to be a winter stew, made in a pressure cooker from frozen.

The most important part to cooking from frozen in a pressure cooker is to remember that the frozen met needs to be submerged beneath the liquid so that it boils. Additionally, even though it is frozen, the meat needs to be browned to give it additional flavor. Even if you brown the big lump of frozen meat, DO IT!

So, I browned the meat. It was in a large lump, but separated nicely during browning.

The middle of the meat may be frozen, but do not worry about it. Add it to the bottom of the pressure cooker.

Then, add your veggies.

I like to keep my veggies chunky when I m cooking in the pressure cooker so that they do not disappear into mush.

Add these to your pressure cooker.

I then deglazed the saute pan with the cooking liquid – in this case, vegetable stock.

I added a can of tomatoes, salt and some Worcestershire Sauce to the stock and added it to the pressure cooker.When you cook meat from frozen, you should add about 40% of the cooking to the recommended cooking time. In this case a beef stew cooks in a pressure cooker for about 35 minutes. With frozen meat, make sure it is on the bottom of the pile, submerged beneath the cooking liquid and add 15-20 to the original 35.

This cooked for about 50 minutes.

The beef looked like this:

1 hour from start to finish (approx) and no one ever knew that I forgot that I was cooking.

Ssshhhhh… your secret is safe with me!