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Beef & Tomato Sauce

16 years ago

I make Red Stew, it's basically beef stew with tomatoes... This time I'm using tomato sauce ( didn't have fresh tomatoes or canned with no added salt )... Will the tomato sauce tenderize the beef or make it tougher?

In other words, should I make sure the meat is good and tender before adding the tomato sauce and cook the veggies separately and add them just before serving?

Rita

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Comments (5)

lindac
16 years ago
Tomato is acidw hich will tenderize the beef a little.
I don't know what your usual method is, but I would brown the beef and any onions, garlic peppers or celery...add the tomato and any other liquid, cover and cook until almost tender than add the carrots and potatoes green beans peas and whatever else you add. You don't want the veggies to be cooked to a mush but you do want the beef cooked until it's tender.
Linda C
ritaotay
Original Author
16 years ago
Thank you much kind lady.

Rita
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bunnyman
16 years ago
I've had good luck boiling beef round roast in tomatoes/tomato juice. After a couple hours I can knock it about with a wooden spoon and mash it with a potato masher. Helps to be 6' 180+ sometimes so I do whole roasts that way. Probably would make things easyier if you cut your meat up first. Acidentally used a frozen pork loin and it came out okay. Used the porkloin for taco meat. Most of the time the beef version becomes chili or my current version of such. Recently I've been adding cabbage, corn, chick peas, mushrooms, and sometimes squash so calling it chili is more a reflection of my prefered spices then anything most people call chili.

Good stuff to work with. With fresh tomatoes laying in the garden begging to be picked up I've done this dish a few times this summer. Now that you have me thinking I've not done the italian spiced beef/tomato/hot peppers over pasta in awhile and it sounds so good. The lean cuts of meat I use really soak up the tomato juice so about 1 quart per pound of roast if you want it to retain some liquid properties. Sometimes I have to eat my "chili" with a fork.

: )
lyra

Hope it all cooks up good for you.
hawk307
16 years ago
Rita: Most of the Tomatoe sauces are canned tomatoes so,
you could cook it the same as always.

I usually do the same as Linda.
Get the meat tender then add the other things that cook faster.
LOU
ritaotay
Original Author
16 years ago
Well it came out better than expected... Most of the low salt - low fat meals I've been making taste blah ( gotta have my salt ) but this was quite tasty...

I started out with some round steak and after I cut off all the fat I had a lot of odd sized pieces... I was going to just cook them that way but they were taking way too long... Anyway, after I browned the meat, almost too well, I added some water and let it simmer for a while... About that time I had second thoughts, hubby sometimes stuffs his mouth with food... So I cut the meat into small pieces, added more water and let it cook a while longer, another hour or so... All that did was make the meat harder... LOL

That's when I posted and the rest is history... I took Linda C's advice and added the no added salt tomato sauce, along with some pepper, dried onions and celery seed and let it cook until the meat was tender, another hour or so... Then I added some carrots, let them cook a bit, added some potatoes and frozen peas and let it simmer till everything was tender and the sauce had thickened... That's all it had it in and it tasted better than the old way... I didn't miss the salty canned tomatoes or the regular Herb-Ox bullion one little bit ( I did add a bit of salt to my plate, when hubby wasn't looking.. lol )... It must have been good, there were no leftovers... Oh, it was made in a 10 inch frying pan and it was full... Hubby even saved his last piece of bread to sop of the last of the sauce... lol

Rita

Now I just have to figure out how to make everything else that good... lol

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