Great Low Carb Beef Stew Recipes
The Best Low Carb Beef Stew Recipes Ever
Beef stew is definitely a hearty meal that the whole family will love. It’s a filling, comforting kind of meal that is not only easy to make, but it’s also very easy to customize to suit a particular taste or diet need. This fact makes beef stew a perfect fit for the low carb diet, and a great addition to any meal plan where you need a simple, easy meal that can be prepared quickly and thrown in to the slow cooker to be ready at the end of a long, busy day.
In this article, we’ll go over the essentials of how to make a great beef stew, as well as which ingredients you’ll need to substitute for low carb alternatives in order to help keep the carb count low. Also, we’ll give you a few fantastic low carb beef stew recipe options that you’ve just got to try. Now, let’s get right to the basics of what makes a great stew.
Essential Beef Stew Ingredients
For starters, the key to any great beef stew is going to be choosing a nice cut of beef to use. Fortunately for stew chefs, there are many suitable choices they could go with, and the biggest difference between the end results will be the method of cooking. For example, for stovetop stews that are simmered for a shorter period of time, you’ll want to go with a leaner beef that has little marbling and is free of large portions of fat and gristle. This is because the shorter cooking times with stovetop stews mean they don’t have enough time to properly soften the fat and remove the chewiness. These types of cuts typically include eye of round or sirloin.
For slow cooker stew recipes, you’ll want to go to the other end of the spectrum and choose a cut of beef that has plenty of marbling, since the long cooking times will cause these cuts of beef to simply fall apart and results in beef with a moist texture and lots of meaty flavour. A beef chuck is an example of one of these marbled cuts, or occasionally you may use short ribs.
In any event, if you end up using the opposite type of beef for either method of cooking, you’ll end up with either really chewy and tough beef, or a stew that has very dry and tight chunks of meat. Choosing the right beef for your cooking method makes a huge difference in the taste and texture of the stew, so be sure to choose wisely.
Typical Beef Stew Vegetable Choices
Aside from the beef, the other main ingredients of a stew are vegetables such as carrots, onions, and potatoes. For low carb dieters, the onions and carrots aren’t much of an issue, but potatoes will need to be swapped out for a low carb alternative. Fortunately, there are many choices that can take the place of potatoes in a beef stew. Some options to consider as potato alternatives include rutabagas, turnips, cauliflower, and even zucchini. These are all readily available vegetables and can all work very well as part of a stew.
Some of these alternatives, such as zucchini or cauliflower, can get overcooked and mush if added to the stew pot too early in the process. If you opt to use one of those as an ingredient in your stew, you’ll want to add them to the simmering stew closer to the end of the cooking process to ensure they stay intact and don’t disintegrate.
How to Thicken a Stew that is Too Thin
It’s not a stew if the broth is thin and too runny. This means you’ve got to thicken it up, and to do it the low carb way you will need to find an alternative thickener to the typical wheat flour. There are a few different ingredients you can use as low carb thickeners, such as cornstarch or some form of vegetable gum. While cornstarch does still contain a small amount of carbs, it is still lower than wheat flower, and you also need to use less of it to achieve the same level of thickening power. Vegetable gums such as xantham gum, are completely carb free, but can be a bit trickier to work with. We recommend using very small amounts at a time in order to test their thickening ability and then add more if needed.
Great Low Carb Beef Stew Recipes
Now that you’ve got the basics of what makes a great stew, we figured you might want some additional inspiration to give a new kind of stew a try in your next meal plan. Here are three fantastic low carb beef stew recipes that are easy to make and taste amazing.
This first recipe comes from Kyndra at PeaceLoveandLowCarb.com, and it’s definitely a winner. It takes the classic beef stew and adds in a ton of extra vegetables like celery, peppers, and mushrooms. It skips the potatoes, but you could easily add in something like a rutabaga or turnip to give it a more classic stew look and feel. This recipe is easily made to be paleo-friendly and is a great addition to any low carb menu.
This hearty stew from the chefs at Atkins combines delicious chunks of beef with plenty of vegetables, and the unmistakable flavours of bacon and red wine to produce a truly special meal that is perfect for low carb dieters. This recipe is fantastic just as it is, or it can easily be used as a basis for your own stew creations by adding in any vegetables of your choice. You can definitely get creative with this one!
If you’re a fan of the instant pot (and let’s face it, we all are), then you’ll totally fall in love with this fantastic stew recipe. This stew uses all the tips and tricks to make sure that the carb count stays low, but that it is also easy to make and has a great, rich flavour that the whole family will love at the end of a long, busy day. In addition, it’s keto-friendly so you can be sure that it is loaded with all the good stuff you want to see in a low carb stew.
Conclusion
Making a delicious and healthy beef stew is certainly easy and making it the low-carb way is very simple. Beef stew is a fantastic addition to a low carb meal plan since it requires very little improvisation or special ingredients. You can also add lots of variety to your stew by changing up the selection of vegetables from time to time and experimenting with different combinations. However you choose to do your stew, we’re sure that with these tips and recipes, you’ll get great reviews from anyone who tries it.
