While browsing through recipes and various cooking sites this week, Mrs J came across a stew recipe by Jamie Oliver. In it, he uses his meat without browning it.

Gasp! The very idea! Even Mr J knows you brown the meat before cooking the stew. Duh!

It’s Jamie Oliver though. He usually knows what he’s talking about. So after tossing and turning and mulling it over Mrs J couldn’t resist checking it out.

Since it felt really backwards from the start she decided to go all in for cooking the stew the wrong way around.

Here’s what she did.

Buy about 700g of beef cut in cubes. If the cubes are still too big, cut them down to desired size.

Bring 1 litre of beef stock to the boil. Add a couple of bay leaves, some peppercorns and some juniper berries. Stir in a good tablespoon of tomato paste and a good three tablespoons of soy sauce. Depending on how salty your stock is, add some salt (it should be quite salty). Ignore everything you thought you knew about cooking and dump in the meat without browning it.

Let simmer while you go on with your veg.

Mrs J used 3 carrots, half a red beet, one sweet potato and three yellow potatoes. Peel and cut it all.

Dump it all in the pot. Sounds easy, takes an age. Unless you’re the Usain Bolt of peeling and cutting. Bring up the heat just enough to keep it all simmering.

Cut a couple of red onions in pieces. Mrs J used three small onions. Chop two cloves of garlic.

Put a bit of butter in a pan and fry onions and garlic on medium heat until the crisp is gone from the onions. Dump uncerimoniously in the pot.

Shake or stir a little to mix in the flavour.

Put the lid on and keep simmering for another 50 min. Remembering that the meat has already cooked all through while you were fiddling with the peeling, cutting and frying.

When done (test the meat to make sure it’s done) give a little stir. The potatoes will thicken the stew naturally, but if it’s too soupy you can help it along with some flour dissolved in water. Let cook for another minute while you mix some finely chopped parsley with some rosemary and some grated lemon rind.

Serve in a deep dish with the parsley mix topping.

And wouldn’t you know it, the meat turns out to be soft and juicy and sweet! Colour Mrs J surprised!

It works for the eye in this dish because there is a lot of colour in the veg, especially the red beet. This prevents the beef from looking grey. Mrs J will probably keep browning the beef in stews with less colourful ingredients. In terms of taste though, backwards turns out to be just fine.

If you want to try a different stew, Mrs J made one not long ago. Check it out here.