Moroccan Spiced Beef Stew
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Moroccan Spiced Beef Stew is a wonderful comfort food. It’s best appreciated during the cold winter days when dishes like stews, soups, and sauces; simmer forever and make the house smell amazing! Its so homey and brings childhood memories rushing back. I really love the smell of some good stew boiling in a pot on Sunday afternoon. This time I decided to add some additional layer of flavors to my beef stew.
For this recipe, I went all Moroccan… The addition of cinnamon, ginger, and cumin were mesmerizing. It’s pretty interesting how couple of spices can change a regular beef stew to something so extra ordinary. The smell in the house was incredible. For this one, my husband chose not to have any appetizers or snacks before dinner because he didn’t want to spoil his appetite. He said that this dish smelled so good that he couldn’t have anything else until he tried this Moroccan Spiced Beef Stew.
Moroccans are famous for their spices. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Usually Moroccan towns have an enclosed old town and the markets with little shops called ‘Souks’ inside. The Souks with spices have baskets of different spices that are shaped like little pyramids with spices of different colors. It all looks very impressive. I went to Marrakech many years ago but the picture of theses spices is still very vivid in my memory. If you are a fan of Sex and the City, you may know what I am talking about. In the sequel movie the girls went to Abu Dhabi. To me the scenes filmed in the Souks looked as if they’d actually been filmed in Marrakech. Several scenes filmed in the Souks (like when Carrie lost her passport trying on the shoes) showed images of the colorful “pyramids” of spices. Worth checking out. Anyways, try to add some of these Moroccan spices to your next stew and you won’t regret it. Moroccan Spiced Beef Stew is a go to dish for a cold winter night.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 pound of grass fed beef cut into chunks
- 1 1/2 cups of pearl onions
- 8 oz of button mushrooms
- 1 cup of carrots , chopped
- 5 prunes , cut into few pieces
- 1 cup of red wine
- 2 1/2 cups of beef stock
- 1 tablespoon of ghee or oil for cooking
- 2 cloves of garlic , chopped
- 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon of cumin
- 1 teaspoon of sweet paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon of cinamon
- 1/4 teaspoon of ginger
- 1 tablespoon of flour (optional)
- Parsley for garnish
- Salt and Pepper
Instructions
- Heat up ghee or oil in a Dutch Oven or other heavy pot
- Season the meat with salt and pepper
- Put the meat in a pot and brown on each side
- Once browned remove meat from the pot
- Add spices to the pot: cumin, paprika, cinnamon, ginger and cook for a minute
- Add tomato paste and garlic and cook for another minute
- Add mushrooms and pearl onions and cook for 5 minutes
- Add wine and cook for a couple of minutes
- Add meat back to the pot
- Add carrots and prunes
- Pour the stock, cover and cook for about 50 minutes until the meat is tender.
- If the sauce is not thick enough, you can mix flour with 1/3 cup of water, mix it well and add it to the pot
- Let it cook for a few minutes more
- Sprinkle some parsley and serve the stew with mashed potatoes.
