Instant Pot Beef Stew Recipe - Budget Bytes (2024)

FAQs

Why is beef stew tough Instant Pot? ›

The Secret to Super Tender Beef

But skip the pre-cut stew beef. Oftentimes, stew beef is cut into irregularly shaped pieces and can have a lot of tough gristle that will never get tender. Picking up a piece of boneless beef chuck instead means that you can easily trim off all the unwanted parts first.

Taste: For overall taste, the pressure cooker was the hands-down winner. Beef, carrots, and potatoes all retained their rich flavors. After 8 hours in the slow cooker, they emerged bland and seemed to need salt.

The best (and least expensive) beef stew meat comes from the front shoulder, also known as the chuck. The rear muscle (also called the round) would definitely make a great stew, but we like chuck better because it has more connective tissue.

Once the meat is browned, pour in the reserved marinade and enough liquid (such as beef broth or water) to cover the meat. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pot, and let the stew simmer gently for at least 2-3 hours. The longer you cook it, the more tender the meat will become.

Unfortunately, once you overcook a piece of meat in the pressure cooker, there's no going back. You'll be left with a pile of dry, crunchy, tasteless fibers and no amount of additional pressure cooking is going to put that moisture back into the meat.

The most important key to making stew meat tender is being sure to cook it for a long time. If you want super tender beef, you'll need to cook it on a low heat in a Dutch oven on the stove or a slow cooker for at least a few hours.

Go for the chuck

The most common beef used for stew is chuck steak, also known as gravy beef or braising steak. Beef chuck comes from the forequarter of the animal consisting of parts of the neck, shoulder blade and upper arm. It is easy to find and it's affordable, making it a great choice for your stew.

Can you overcook stew in a slow cooker? A slow-cooked stew is pretty forgiving, but cooking beyond the point of tenderness can dry out the meat as well as the cooking juices and sauce. If serving is delayed, switch your slow cooker to warm until you're ready to eat.

Cornstarch, potato starch, and chickpea flour are a couple of pantry-friendly ways to thicken soups, stews, and sauces in the slow cooker. Just a tablespoon or two of any — added towards the end of cooking — will thicken sauces especially well.

Red potatoes are the standard I've seen used in most beef stews. Yes, they hold up fine, and, along with carrots and celery, add a bit of needed color in an otherwise drab dish.

What is the secret to tender beef stew? ›

The secret to tender beef stew is to keep the pot at a gentle simmer the entire time so the connective tissues in the beef have a chance to break down and soften.

Next time you're shopping for stew beef, look at your options and see what cuts of meat will work best for your recipe. For example, chuck is a lean and tender cut of beef that works well in stew. However, if you would prefer a thicker and more flavorful stew, short ribs or oxtail may be better choices for you.

He told us that “chuck is easy to find at most grocers, [it's] affordable, and [it's] succulent due to the connective tissues that are marbled into the meat. Chuck is very moist and doesn't dry out during [slow cooking] because of its release of gelatin.”

It helps to break down the collagen, naturally tenderizing the meat and releasing great flavor! The longer you can marinate the better but a minimum of 3 hours is essential.

Browning adds flavour and it makes for a better looking final dish. Preheat the pan so it's ripping hot, then cook the beef in batches. An overcrowded pan can lead to boiling instead of browning. Let the meat sit untouched for 2-3 minutes on the first side, then a minute or so on the others.

What to Do If the Meat Isn't Tender Enough? The meat in Pressure Cooker Beef Stew should be cooked tender by the time the first 10-minute cook time ends. If you like a fork-tender beef, you may want to add a few extra minutes to the cook time. I recommend tasting the beef to ensure it's cooked as tender as you like it.

That's actually better than the expensive steak for a stew. Just keep cooking it for a few more hours or so. It'll take 4 - 5 hours for most stewing/braising meat to tenderize. I'd be surprised if it wasn't tender after another hour or two.

You overcook your beef stew meat

There's something romantic about letting a stew simmer away on the stove top all day, but if you actually let it cook all day long, chances are you'll wind up with tough, dry, stringy meat.

It wasn't cooked long and slow enough. That's simple, as stewing beef, like any beef cooked low and slow take hours to get it done right. Depending on the meat, I try to stick to the cooking time in a recipe as the meat cubes are MUCH smaller than say, a roast.