How to cook veal stew ✨ 

Everything you need to know about how to cook veal stew: what cut of meat to choose, how to prepare it, how much it needs to cook, and ideas for traditional and creative recipes. Veal stew is a tasty meat main course, which requires a long cooking, but it is simple to make and is prepared with few ingredients. It is a dish that unites us all and that immediately makes us feel at home, in the most fragrant, warm and welcoming sense there is: we are talking about veal stew. A specialty of traditional Italian cuisine, it takes a little longer than many other recipes, but it is not particularly complicated to make. All it takes is a few small precautions.

How to make stew: choose the cut of meat well

To cook a very tender stew, it is very important to choose the right cut of meat. So choose a piece that is particularly rich in connective tissue, because then during cooking it will become gelatinous and this will have a double positive function: it will make the meat very soft and will also give more body to the sauce. On the contrary, it would end up giving us a hard stew instead. In any case, when you wonder how to prepare stew, know that made with veal it is certainly better than a beef stew because it is more easily digestible (find out the nutritional values of the main cuts of veal). After choosing the right piece of meat, the second fundamental step in preparing veal stew is not to make a mistake in cooking. In fact, the consistency of the whole dish depends on it. Before cooking the meat, it is important to brown it well with the herbs over a nice open flame. But only at this stage. When you start with the actual cooking of your stew, remember that the fire must be sweeter. In fact, it is only with a long and slow cooking that the meat will become soft, a pleasure for the palate. If you use an open heat to cook your veal stew instead, the end result will be a dry, stringy dish.

The same thing goes for the vegetables you'll want to add to your stew. However, you must keep in mind that they have different cooking times from meat and therefore should be prepared separately and added to the stew only in the final phase of cooking. Many stew recipes call for the addition of an alcoholic part during cooking. It can be wine (white or red) or beer: in any case, it is very important to let them evaporate well. This is because otherwise they would give the flavor of the dish a certain acidity that would ruin the effort made to prepare an excellent stew. By allowing the wine or beer to evaporate well, the meat takes on the best of the taste and there is no risk of the dish being acidic. Here is a recipe for veal stew with beer. 

Equally important for your veal stew is choosing the right pot for cooking. So which pot for the stew? What you need is a saucepan. But be careful, the saucepan you use to stew the meat should not be too large. This is because the more space there is between the stew and the lid, the more steam and condensation are created. And you definitely don't want a watered-down dish. Have you chosen the most suitable cut of meat? All you have to do is decide how to cook the stew with potatoes. Like all traditional Italian recipes, depending on the territory, it lends itself to many variations.

In any case, the most common ways to make veal stew are: with potatoes and tomato: the great classic, for those who love veal stew with sauce; with peas: you can always prepare it with tomato or with potatoes and onions; A viable alternative? The asparagus stew. with mushrooms: what can I say, porcini mushrooms are always the best choice, but you can vary freely; with the spices of your choice: here, for example, you will find the recipe for an exquisite stew with turmeric. And, as mentioned earlier, you can decide to give even more flavor to your stew by using white wine or beer to deglaze. And finally here is the Barolo stew inspired by the recipe for braised meat marinated in red wine.

For the stew you need: 

a glass of Barolo red wine

1 kg and 600 g of veal (preferably shoulder)

butter

black pepper and salt to taste

extra virgin olive oil

2 carrots

2 onions

2 glasses of hot broth

2 bay leaves

4 ribs of celery

2 tablespoons of flour

3-4 garlic cloves.

The ingredients for the marinade are: 

1 bay leaf

black peppercorns

1/2 bottle of Barolo

2 cloves of garlic

1 sprig of rosemary

3 sage leaves.

Preparation

First of all, prepare the mixture for the marinade well in advance. Mix half a bottle of red wine, 3-4 crushed peppercorns, cloves, rosemary and chopped bay leaf and sage in a bowl. Then let the veal in pieces rest for 4 hours. At the end of this phase, place a large pan with a knob of butter over low heat. Once melted, add the chopped carrots, onions and celery, cloves and bay leaf. In another pan, brown the previously dried stew with a drizzle of oil. Once it has browned, sprinkle it with flour and transfer it to the first pan with the sauté. Stir carefully with a ladle to combine. Heat 1 glass of Barolo in a bain-marie and use it to flavor the meat, which will be simmered for another 20 minutes. Then season with salt and continue cooking for another 60 minutes with the lid on. To prevent the cooking juices from congealing too much, add the hot broth if necessary. Turn off the heat, season with pepper to taste and leave the pan covered to rest for half an hour. Then serve with the sauce. Accompany the dish with sliced and ready-made homemade bread and for the inevitable scarpetta.