Southern Chicken Stew Recipe - Southern Plate (2024)

FAQs

How do you make stew better? ›

If it tastes off-balance, add some finishing flavors to bring it to the next level. Try adding soy sauce or Worcestershire for extra savory (or umami) flavor, a touch of honey or brown sugar for sweetness, lemon zest or vinegar for brightness or chili powder or smoked paprika for spice and depth.

Both do contain chicken, but today's Georgia mull is a bare-bones milk-based stew while the Virginia muddle is a tomatoey concoction thickened by limas and potatoes—essentially, a thicker version of Brunswick stew.

Add a Starch

One common way to add starch to a dish like beef stew is by adding uncooked potatoes or rice part way through cooking, allowing them to fully cook in the stew. This has the added benefit of turning your stew into a complete meal in itself.

The three main thickening agents for gravies are flour, cornflour and arrowroot. The first two are normally used in savoury dishes while arrowroot tends to be used in sweet dishes – that said, arrowroot will work in a savoury dish as it has no flavour.

There are flavors in tomatoes that are alcohol-soluble, so adding red wine along with tomato paste also helps to enhance beef stew." Laurence has a few other tricks I've borrowed to create the best beef stew, including adding Worcestershire, which gets a serious umami punch from anchovies.

The most important key to making stew meat tender is being sure to cook it for a long time. If you want super tender beef, you'll need to cook it on a low heat in a Dutch oven on the stove or a slow cooker for at least a few hours.

Mix one teaspoon cornflour with a tablespoon of room temperature water and add to your stew. Then bring to the boil and cook until desired thickness is reached. Cornflour is a great gluten-free thickener. It has a slightly more gelatinous texture, so only add a teaspoon at time or your sauce may become a bit goopy.

As mentioned above, overcooked chicken is the most common reason for rubbery chicken because the chicken loses moisture as it cooks. Checking the internal temperature of the chicken is the best way to avoid this.

Can you overcook a chicken stew? Yes, overcooking chicken stew will cause the chicken to become tough and dry. Allow it to simmer just long enough for the ingredients to soften and cook through. Then, remove the stew from the heat.

Cut the potatoes into bite-sized chunks and add to the already cooking stew about 30 minutes before you stop cooking and plate the stew for serving (If the potatoes cook too long, they'll just get mushy or even fall apart and add nothing but a thickening starch to the sew.

Should you brown meat before making stew? ›

Very simply put, browning equals flavor. As beef sears, the outside caramelizes, adding extra flavor to the beef, not to mention creating these tasty little browned bits that form on the bottom of the pot. Without browning, the finished stew just won't taste as good and the sauce won't be as dark.

ANSWER: Waxy potatoes or those called boiling potatoes stand up well in soups and stews.

Enrich with canned milk.

Cream is one of the most delicious ways to thicken a soup — all that rich milk fat helps to emulsify the soup and make it even creamier. Cream can curdle with the long cook time of the slow cooker, so I prefer canned milks like evaporated milk or coconut milk for thickening instead.

Place a lid on top, turn heat down to low, then simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Remove lid then gently simmer for another 1-1/2 hours, or until the meat is tender and stew has thickened, stirring occasionally. If the stew begins to reduce too quickly before the meat is tender, place the lid back on top.

Tomato paste: you'll use some tomato paste to help thicken the broth and to give it a nice tang of sweetness. Worcestershire: the wonderful addition of Worcestershire gives this beef stew recipe an incredible savory umami flavor.

The saltiness and flavor of soy sauce will improve a bland soup, stew, stir-fry and other savory dishes that have a liquid component. Add ketchup or tomato sauce. The acidic flavor adds one dimension, while any additional flavorings in the sauce will add depth to the dish too. Pour in a little Worcestershire sauce.

Don't Rush the Stewing of the Stew

Your beef stew needs at least two hours, sometimes three, on a low burner, so the meat is tender, and the flavors mingle. This isn't a dish to rush; it's a dish to make on a lazy weekend so you can enjoy the smell as it stews.

Simmer, don't boil. It starts out tough but long slow cooking will melt the connective tissue. If you cook past the time when the connective tissue is melted, you boil out all the water in the meat and it becomes tough again, like a well-done steak. So check your stew/braise and when the meat is tender, it's done.

Go for the chuck

The most common beef used for stew is chuck steak, also known as gravy beef or braising steak. Beef chuck comes from the forequarter of the animal consisting of parts of the neck, shoulder blade and upper arm.