Beef in Red Wine with Noodles

It is so hard to take a good picture of this dish. I can assure you that it tastes much, much better than it looks.

As I mentioned in my post below I do a lot of cooking with my slow cooker. This is one of the easy dishes that is so flavorful that I would not hesitate to serve it to company. I love that this has a "grown-up" taste but yet it is made in a slow cooker. One usually doesn't think of those together. It is still comfort food so that makes for a happy and warm tummy.

I am one of those cooks that is not very good about measuring; a little of this, a splash of that. My recipes are rarely specific and certainly allow for personalization.

For this dish I tossed the beef cubes in a flour/pepper/salt/seasoning mix concoction and then browned in butter. However, this recipe does just fine if you toss the untouched beef cubes in the slow cooker without those steps. I am not sure that you can go wrong with any approach. Here is the recipe:

1.5 to 2 pounds of beef stew cubes
1 large onion, chopped in fairly large pieces
1 envelope of dry onion soup
mushrooms to suit your taste ( I had some sauteed in butter in the freezer and tossed those in)
1.5 cups of a good red wine (merlot, etc.)

Egg Noodles or Rice

I placed the beef cubes in the bottom of the slow cooker. Then I topped with the contents on the onion soup packet, added the onions and mushrooms on top. I then took the wine and poured it all over everything. I set the slow cooker for 6 hours on high. (You can do 8 or 10 hours on low if you wish). The house smelled absolutely heavenly while this was cooking. I ended up taking it out at the 5 hour mark and it was more than done. I served over hot noodles (I forgot to butter them!). We had a side of broccoli and french bread. The au jus that this makes is so wonderful that you might want to consider a side of mashed potatoes. Just don't forget the bread to sop up the juice. Enjoy!