Family Circle Moroccan Beef Stew

I love stew. There is something extremely comforting about sitting down with a warm bowl of homemade stew. Plus, there are normally delicious leftovers to heat up the next day to enjoy the dish all over again. My two sons are both in stages where they decide that they hate all the foods they used to love. Last week cheese was my youngest sons favorite food, this week he told me at lunch that he hates cheese. Luckily stew is one of their favorite foods and that hasn't changed even with their varied food choices. My favorite meat to use in stew is beef. I love how tender beef becomes after sitting on the stove for hours. The February issue of Family Circle Magazine had a recipe for Moroccan Beef Stew, which looked full of flavorful ingredients and perfect for my stew loving family.

This recipe has 14 ingredients. It takes 15 minutes of prep and approximately 2 hours of cook time and makes 6 servings. The biggest modification I made to the recipe was to make my own beef stock. Homemade beef stock is actually very easy and has a great impact of the flavor of homemade stock and stew. Roasting the beef bone before adding the vegetables and water brings out a great flavor to the stock. For the beef I made sure to buy a high quality cut of beef chuck, I have tried buying cheap cuts in the past and even after extensive cooking time they still were tough and full of tendons. I chose to serve the stew over pearl couscous. This was the first time that I had served this type of couscous to my family and my kids thought it was great and loved the shape. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

The combination of the fruit and beef blended well together and the stew came out very tender. I liked the inclusion of spinach in this recipe, it provides great nutrition and brings all the flavors together nicely. My two kids loved the pearl couscous and it will be something that I serve more of in the future. Overall, an easy and delicious tasting stew recipe.

For the recipe go to Moroccan Beef Stew.