AMERICAN STEW, A RECIPE OF HOPE AND HEALTH

American stew, in spite of the name, is a delicate dish with a layered flavor profile.

The ingredients are common to most every country, but the preparation and cooking temperature are the biggest difference.

What American stew is not, is half-baked.

It’s also not for diners who eat out of cans with a plastic fork, though there’s nothing wrong with that.

American stew starts from scratch. Just like a pile of building material looks the same as a pile of debris at one point, the ingredients of stew looks like it might be trash.

From dirty carrots, to sprouting celery, to crusty mushrooms, more than one beginner tossed the goods at the start and popped open a can of Dinty Moore and called it good.

Canned goods ship to other countries, not this this stew.

Not that the vegetables all need to be organic, free roaming, and gently harvested. Pull them out of your garden, if you’ve got one. If not, find a store.

The cutting board is clean and ready? The knife sharp and polished? Fingers back? Let’s go.

Cut everything the same size for cooking consistency. You don’t want mushy potatoes and crunchy carrots. Based on the size of mouths to feed, not the number the size, keep it small to avoid choking hazards.

If you’ve never seen one, or had to react to choking, you understand.

Get a separate cutting board if you need to cut meat, if you use meat.

Avoid the package labeled Stew Meat. Look in the cooler for a better cut and size it yourself. It’s very rewarding to make your own stew meat, homesteader.

Brown the meat 2-3 minutes in olive oil for a good seal. Following this procedure produces tender instead of dry and chewy.

Two pounds of cut roast is different than two pounds of possum jerky, but experiment if you’re feeling it. However, American stew is experiment enough.

Quick review: Cut veggies and meat, brown meat, put it all in a slow cooker. So far so good?

Yes, you could rip the veggies by hand and dump them into a tub of water with a hunk of mystery meat and boil a few hours. That can happen anywhere there’s a heat source, ingredients, and potable water.

Let’s use a little more finesse here.

Instead of trapping and killing and drinking the animal blood, you savage you, follow the recipe.

American Stew Recipe Of Democracy

If we were cooking up some democracy, it starts with fair and legal elections like the one just finished.

Inspite of a cook who can’t and won’t follow any recipe, can’t and won’t cook or clean anything, can’t and won’t try to understand the benefit of diet and exercise, making scratch stew isn’t brain surgery.

With election results tried, tested, and verified by judges installed by a bad cook, the whining and complaining continued. When a man lives on fat burgers, they see the rest of the world and wonder why it doesn’t live on the same thing.

Why, why, why? Because it’s lazy, questionably nutritious, and creates extra problems in the elimination department. Which isn’t to say a diet of fast food produces an explosive rectal event, but the face of the bad cook presents an argument that it could.

After a fair election is verified by the judicial and legislative, if not the executive branch, of American culinary/democracy fans, the good part starts.

Vegetables cut just so, meat prepped just right, and all into the waiting crock pot.

Add broth, seasonings, herbs, a dash of vinegar, click it, and forget it.

You’re good to go, unless the voice of the chopped chef still reaches you.

On television, the cooking show Chopped shows how to handle defeat. One chef at a time doesn’t meet the standards set by judges at each step until only one is left.

The chopped chef gets to say a few things about their performance, then the cameras go back to the remaining chefs and the challenges they face.

Instead of lingering on the chopped chef and giving them more time to complain about the process, the format, the judges, the other contestants, the show, like life itself it moves on. The results never change once the decision is made.

At no time does the Chopped show allow the chopped chef to encourage the studio audience to storm the stage and attempt to take hostages.

That’s not how television works, not how democracy works, and everyone who has seen both in action know this too apparent truth.

A bad cook, like a bad leader, requires different shows with different formats.

One is not called How To Make A Sh!t Sandwich.

The other specializes in making sh!t sandwiches served hot to 86 countries.

American Melting Pot

Whether you think of America as a melting pot where everyone who shows up joins together for the common good, or a mosaic of separate elements, googling ‘Beef Stew’ is an argument for both.

Scroll after scroll shows images of beef stew, each one the best of its kind, unique in its flavor and appeal, and hyped as better than anything you’ve ever touched a spoon to.

But it all looks like beef stew. Why? Because I googled Beef Stew, and that’s what I got. Beef stew, not chicken and dumplings, not pork chops, not stir fried tofu.

(Here’s a secret: For the next batch I’m swapping out beef for tofu. Will anyone notice? I’m excited to find out. Don’t tell.)

I googled American democracy and found images of flags and buttons and questions about America after the 2020 elections. No beef stew.

By following this logic, we get what we search for. We get pictures if we click images.

If something isn’t right, we depend on Karen to talk to the manager.

While you sort out life for the next year, month, week, tomorrow, make some American stew today. Make a lot and share it.

Explain to your right wing friends how stew works, how texture and flavor all combine to something better than the separate parts.

If they aren’t screaming about their freedom and waving a pocket constitution, the recipe for democracy, explain your goals as balancing flavor.

The big five are: Sweetness. Saltiness. Bitterness. Sourness. Umami.

These five come from Le Cordon Bleu. Fight them.

Figure it out, then get your stew on.

Don’t skip the last part. Add 1/4 cup of broth and whisk in 1/4 cup of flour. Stir it into the stew. Why? Because it works to hold everything together.

What’s that remind you of?