After a hard day of skiing you may not want to cut, chop, slice, dish, mash, grind, brown, fry, grill, and so on and so forth.
Easy to understand, skiing can be strenuous. However, defaulting to the local supper club can be costly and of course as good as supper clubs can be, nothing beats a good home cooked dinner.
What is a skier to do?
I suggest using a slow cooker and doing the preparation work the night before you go skiing.
Get it all ready the night before and before you leave get the slow cooker out, plug it in and turn it on. When you come back your dinner should be done and ready for eating. I started working on slow-cooking when I was in college. I would perform the same routine, I would prepare the dinner the night before and before I would go to classes the next morning I would pull the cooker out of the refrigerator (or back porch depending on how cold it was outside), plug in the cooker, and turn it on. Later when I returned from classes I had a very inviting meal awaiting for myself.
A number of recipes are suited for slow cooking and what is even better you can use less expensive meats when slow cooking, because the slow moist cooking of the slow cooker tenderizes the meat.
The below recipe is one I have made many times and highly recommend it. In addition, I suggest trying it before you go to the ski hill. Maybe you may not like it or want to adjust it. One last suggestion, it is not a big deal to buy a chunk of chuck roast and cutting it up, that will save you a bit of money you can use to buy a better bottle of wine or better beer.
Beef Stew
- 2 pounds of beef chuck or beef stew meat, cut into 1 inch cubes
- 1/4 cup of flour
- 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1-1/2 cups of beef broth
- 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 teaspoon of paprika
- 4 carrots sliced
- 3 potatoes diced
- 2 onions chopped
- 1 stalk of celery sliced
- 2 teaspoons of kitchen bouquet (optional which is good because I have no clue as to what it is)
Place the meat into the slow cooker. In a bowl, mix together the flour, salt, and black pepper and then pour over the meat stirring it all up so the meat is coated with the mixture. Now, place the rest of the ingredients into the slow cooker and mix it all up.
Place the slow cooker in the refrigerator or in a critter-proof container outside. In the morning when you get up and before you go to the ski hill (or when you wake up) retrieve the slow cooker from cold-storage and plug it in. The recipe I work from states cook on low 10 to 12 hours and on high from 5 to 6 hours. I usually go with low and eight hours works.
When you return from the ski hill a wonderful smell will welcome you and great tasting food will be all set and you can have it for less cost than one round of drinks at the supper club.
Make sure you have some bread and butter on hand!
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