Shepherd’s Stew

Nothing beats a great stew recipe. Stews provide that warm, stick-to-your-ribs kind of feeling that comes with eating hearty foods this time of year. With ingredients like sausage, potatoes, and vegetables, this recipe for Shepherd’s Stew will fill you up and warm you from the inside out. Another great attribute of stew is the fact that it freezes and reheats well. This recipe made about 12 servings for me. Since I’m not cooking for a big family, after portioning away containers for lunches, the rest of the stew went into the freezer. I like to use strong zip top freezer bags to freeze stew flat. This way it doesn’t take much room in the freezer. I’ll bring it out on a night when I need to get a quick meal on the table.

As always, I made a few substitutions when I whipped this up. First, I used a mixture of ground beef, veal, and pork in the stew. This is sold at supermarkets and labeled for use in meatloaf. I like the variety of texture and flavor it provides as opposed to just using one kind of ground meat or sausage meat. I also tossed in a few carrots that I chopped up. I threw the carrots in with the onions.