Braised Beef with Butternut Squash, Petite Potatoes, Carrots, and Green Beans

This dish gets the award for most colorful dish, ever. Don't you think? It's one of the things that really drew me to the recipe, the combination of butternut squash, carrots, green beans, and multi-colored potatoes. I made the rainbow!


I like to braise meat on my days off, because I can clean the house, blog, or do whatever I want really, without having to pay attention to what I'm cooking (I hope to get a slow-cooker and/or a pressure cooker soon, so I can use those methods too one day). Another great benefit of braising is that it emits a delicious aroma throughout the house. I found the following recipe in my FODMAPs booklet  (which you can order by clicking on the link on my right sidebar). As you can see, the original recipe was written using the metric system.......



I converted the best I could, and ended up with the following recipe (oh, and I also changed the protein, in case you didn't notice. Nick claims to be allergic to lamb. Whatever).

Braised Beef with Butternut Squash, Petite Potatoes, Carrots, and Green Beans

Ingredients
(Serves 4)
2 T garlic-infused olive oil
1 pound lean beef, cubed (I used lean stew beef)
4 large carrots
3-3.5 cups low sodium beef broth **
1/2 cup corn flour
1/2 butternut squash, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 cups fresh green beans
10 petite potatoes (I bought purple, red, and white potatoes, for more color and nutrients)
Chopped parsley for garnish (optional)

**NOTE:  Look for a garlic and onion free beef broth to make this low-FODMAPs. 

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees and roast the butternut squash and potatoes for about 40 minutes (I seasoned mine with a bit of salt and garlic olive oil)

2. After the butternut squash and potatoes are roasted, reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees. While the temperature is adjusting, blanch your fresh green beans.

3. Heat a pan with your garlic-infused olive oil, then brown teach side of the beef. Add the chopped carrots to your braising pan and then place the beef on top/around the carrots.

4. Add about 3 cups of beef broth to the braising pan (or enough to cover the beef a bit more than half way).

5. Put the lid on the braiser and place in oven for about one hour. After one hour, flip the beef so the other side gets emerged in the beef broth. Heat for another 30-40 minutes, or until the beef is to your desired tenderness.

6. Add the corn flour to a small saucepan and add enough cold water to make a thick paste. Next, add the remains of the juices from the meat to your corn flour paste. If needed, add about 1/2 cup of beef stock to thin the paste into a sauce, and cook over a high heat until the sauce thickens (stir regularly).

7. Serve everything together on a plate, and garnish with parsley if you desire.

You might prefer a more watery/thinned-down sauce, but I like thick sauces (I guess this is more like a gravy, right?). This sauce ("gravy") was not great on it's own, but worked well when eaten together with all the other ingredients.

Estimated Nutrition Facts
(Recipe makes 4 servings)

And since I am such an amazing daughter (haha) I brought some leftovers to my mom. She loved it.

QUESTION: What's your favorite slow-cooking method? Is it braising? Pressure cooking? Slow-cooker?

Braising With Wine, and Being a Food Detective

Can you believe I had never braised meat prior to about three weeks ago? I was looking through my Clean Eating Magazine and saw a picture of my Le Creuset cast iron braiser (or dutch oven) and realized that I have had it for almost a year now and have never used it for its main purpose....braising! Literally that same day I drove to the store and picked up some braising meat, with a mission of creating the best darn braised meat a girl could make, without onion and garlic (that's quite a mission, I must say).

Wine-Braised Beef With Carrots, Mushrooms, and Broccoli


Ingredients

16 ounces braising meat

2 tsp. sea salt

1/2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper

1 T olive oil

2 cups red wine (I used Malbec )

1.5 cups water

1.5 cups fresh carrots (or parsnips)

1.5 cups fresh broccoli

1.5 cups fresh mushrooms

**If you want to use onion, you can, but I did not **

Parsley for garnish


Directions

1. Season beef with salt and pepper. Place the beef in your braiser (or dutch oven) and heat on medium-high. Brown the beef well on both sides for about 8 minutes. Once heated, take out the meat and place it on a separate plate for the time being.


2. Reduce heat to low, add onion (if you are using onion) and cook for about 15-20 minutes until caramelized. Stir in 1/2 cup of wine and increase heat to bring to boil, scraping the brown bits from the braiser with a spoon.

3. Stir in carrots, broccoli, and mushrooms, along with the remaining 1.5 cups of wine and the 1.5 cups of water. Return to a boil, reduce heat

( This photo is very steamy, and perhaps not so pretty, but it's as pretty as I could make it! I tell you, this meal was delicious, despite the looks of it.)

The house started smelling pretty darn good about an hour into the cooking process. Nick made his way upstairs from his downstairs "man cave" and said he could smell the amazing dinner I was preparing (or...waiting around for).

Nutrition Facts
(Serving Size: 1/4th of recipe, or about 4 ounces meat, with veggies)

As most of you know, I'm not one to take a lot of time making dinner. This recipe may sound like a lot of work, but the Le Creuset braiser did all the work really. I just waited around for a couple hours and worked on other stuff. In other words, this was super easy! I didn't even have to chop anything because I used baby carrots (already small enough to go in the braiser), sliced mushrooms, and fresh broccoli that I just ripped off the stem and threw into the pan. Easy. And the end product was delicious. The only problem was......

An hour after eating this meal, I was in PAIN!

Source: iStock Photo

Sometimes I have to play food detective to find out what I may have eaten that caused me pain. In this case, it was the wine in which my meal bathed for two hours. Wine is something I need to limit on my low FODMAPs diet (about 1 4-ounce glass max, at a time). I know I'm not supposed to drink a lot of wine, but I wasn't thinking about that when I was using wine for braising! Oh man, what a mistake.  I'm pretty sure the braising just concentrated the sugars more and caused me some major malabsorption issues (maybe??).  Oops!  Although, to be honest, the mushrooms and broccoli probably didn't help either!  They both contain FODMAPs as well.

Two weeks earlier I had done something similar. I drank a popular natural diet pop/soda (I can't indicate the name brand, but I bet you could guess it) and about an hour later I was more bloated and uncomfortable than I had been in a long time. I soon realized the diet pop had erythritol, a "natural sugar alcohol" that causes me (and many people) GI issues. A couple days prior to that I realized I had consumed the drink below, which also contains erythritol PLUS fructose (toxic combination for me!).

I think (and hope) I've learned my lesson. No more diet sodas with erythritol or excess fructose added, and no more braising in wine. The next time I braise I'm using low sodium chicken stock (without garlic or onion).

QUESTION: What's your favorite food to braise? What do you use as your braising liquid? On another note, does erythritol cause you stomach pain, like me??