The trick is to let your flavoring vegetables cook down with the meat from the beginning, and to put your "eating" vegetables, the ones that you want to have large pieces of which retain their identity, into the stew to cook for their appropriate times. That way they take on the flavor of the stew, and add some of their own to the stew, and are correctly cooked to serve. My very favorite carrots are the ones cooked in beef or lamb stew. :) This does require enough experience to know how long the meat takes, how long the vegetables each take, and how much added time you'll need because of the additions. The reason restaurants cook the vegetables separately and add them at the end isn't because it's better--it isn't!--but because it works best for restaurant management where you have different people eating at different times and requesting the stew on demand (service within 20 minutes). That's the only way to keep the veg from going mushy over three hours of dinner service. The veg are par cooked. The stew is cooked and held at keep warm temperature. A portion of each is added to a pan over high heat and brought to temperature and finished. Made in the pot and served family style is superior but only the occasional auberge or outsider place is set up to do it that way for serving the public.

I made them. They were definitely not as light and fluffy as the other make-ahead mashed potatoes I have made for years, but everyone liked them, including my kids. However, I think I prefer the ones I usually make with sour cream and cottage cheese (lumps removed) - they have a lot more flavor. My kids won't eat them b/c of the sour cream but I think in the future, I'll stick with those and just make my kids regular mashed potatoes with butter and milk. Regular mashed reheat well enough for my kids to eat them and easy enough to put some aside for them w/o adding the sour cream, etc. Question for those that use a crock to keep their mashed potatoes warm, have you ever experienced an issue with the texture changing? Years ago, my mom made mashed potatoes in the morning and put them in her crockpot to keep warm. I wasn't there that year, but she told me that they kind of liquified and they had to toss them out. SHe couldn't figure out why, but ever since, she (or I, if we are together) use the recipe that my MIL gave me - the ones with sour cream and cottage cheese and just bake them while the turkey is roasting.

I love stew. I think there are a few essential things to do,then the rest is up to you and what you like - like leaving out parsnips if you don't like them! 1) make sure you trim the meat well. I hate finding nasty bits of fat or gristle on the meat. 2)toss the meat in a little flour and brown well in some oil, then soften the onion. Do you like garlic? If so, add that now to the onion. 3) do you like wine in your stew? You can add wine, water or stock. 4) decide on which herbs you like. Bay, thyme, parsley...... 5) you can continue to add veggies at stage 2 like celery or carrots. 6) you can fry off som bacon chunks and mushrooms and add them to the stew half an hour before the end of cooking. Have fun inventing your "stew style"!

haus proud - "Stew" is as varied as the folks who make it and you've covered the many options very well.... Here's my take on it after doing some testing and looking at some of the science (probably after a reading session of "On Food and Cooking" - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen - by Harold McGee). I personally made it the traditional way forever and always and when I tried a different recipe and method, I fell in love with stew all over again and never returned to the traditional method. Traditionally, you wanted a bit of fat on stew meat, or the finished meat would be dry. Traditionally, stew meat is dredged. It seemed to take a lot of extra fat in the pan to brown dredged meat. I don't follow either of those methods and like my stew much better now that I don't. But as we all know, all taste is subjective and cooking is about choices. I use chuck, because a good butcher will tell you there is a little more fat (even though it's considered a lean cut) and more connective tissue, which add both flavor and tenderness during a long, slow cooking process, as Joe pointed out. When you purchase a package of "stew meat", it can be cut from almost anywhere - more of a mystery meat. I cut my own stew meat and avoid as much visible fat as possible, and cut it into 3/4- to 1-inch cubes. It's a personal thing - I don't like to wrestle a large 1-1/2-inch cube of beef in my stew. I never dredge the meat because I think it interferes with the browning process and tends to make the bottom of the pan a sticky, disgusting mess. But as with most cooking, dredging is a choice - it's neither is right or wrong. I also don't salt the meat before browning. Salted meat exudes more juices and dries out. Adding the salt to the stew after the meat is browned produces jucier meat. I use a small amount of fat for browning the first batch of meat (probably less than a tablespoon), fairly high heat, and brown only in small batches, removing each batch from the Dutch oven and setting it aside, until the entire 2-pounds of meat is browned. Not a lot of fat in the pan, but if there is, I'd dab it out with a paper towel, careful to leave the "flavorful cooked-on goodies". I don't constantly stir the meat while it's browning, but let it sear well, then turn or stir it, until all sides are well-browned. I usually don't add any fat for the subsequent batches of meat I brown, so that saves some added fat. If you brown the meat all at once, you end up stewing the meat pieces because there's too much moisture from the large amount of meat pieces. Browning, without dredging, will render a darker, richer, brown stew with more flavor. I also add a t. of lemon juice while simmering the meat, which is a tenderizer. I remove some of the potatoes and a cup or two of the liquid and blend it in a blender or food processor and return to the pot to avoid the starchy taste of flour/water slurry, which congeals when refrigerated and separates when frozen and reheated. So, to each their own, for whatever reasons... -Grainlady