The Perfect Stew

As we bask in the grey, stormy wetness that is typical in a Pacific Northwest Fall, my wife and I are comfortably relaxing in our recliners. Laughing at something funny on the television as the smell of the perfect stew fills the house.

We started making homemade stew when we were dating, many, many years ago. Perfection wasn’t on our minds. We just felt like stew. It just sounded good. We read a recipe, made a list, went shopping, came home, and started. All of this was in haste. We rushed through the grocery store without considering the implications of every choice we were making. We followed some basic instructions, but it was a mad dash to get the ingredients into the pot as fast as possible so we could enjoy the stew immediately. Excited, we sat down to eat.

The stew was mediocre at best. There was something missing, and we knew we just had to figure it out together, as a team. This is how we became obsessed with making the perfect stew.

Over the years, we have discovered many secrets. Choosing the right produce. Selecting the leanest beef. Getting the blend of herbs and spices just right. Frying the floured beef cubes to a dark brown and keeping the drippings. Slightly softening the potatoes off to the side and adding them last so they wouldn’t get too soft. We saw improvement in almost every batch. My wife cheered me on through all of this and bragged to her friends about having a chef for a husband. But I always knew in my heart that it still wasn’t good enough. I continued to fall just short of perfection and couldn’t figure out why.

Any pursuit for perfection is hard and frustrating, and it can be so easy to just give up and settle for less. But having the support of the right teammate makes a world of difference. We kept each other going, driven by a shared obsession, to get it right no matter how long or hard we had to work on it. This year, I’m happy to report that on a dark cold wet day, we made the perfect stew.

The secret has been with us all along, and we used the secret throughout our shared journey at different times in the stew making process. We had just never incorporated the secret into every, single, step. And now, I am going to share the secret with you.

The secret is time and patience.

Now when we go shopping for the ingredients, it’s not an errand. It is a quest. My wife and I divide and conquer in the produce section. Each onion, potato, carrot, and celery selected with care. I'm responsible for the meat. The beef must have almost no marbling. She selects a good hearty bread to accompany the stew that will bake crispy on the outside and be warm and soft on the inside. The anticipation to rush is exquisite but we resist, knowing the reward will be worth the wait.

We go shopping either the day before or early the morning of because we need to get things going in the morning. We chop the vegetables into perfect bite-sized chunks. Not too big for her and not too small for me. There's no measuring anymore. We can tell if the distribution of ingredients is correct by instinct at this point. I lightly soften the potatoes off to the side and will put them in last, so they aren’t too soft. We mix the spices before committing to them, sniffing often until the right aroma springs forward. Each piece of beef is perfectly cubed, floured, and fried to a nice deep brown and put off to the side for later. I pour off most of the oil but keep the drippings in the bottom of the pan.

Then, with everything prepped, it all comes together with a flourish! I sauté the vegetables in the leftover drippings until the onions just start to brown, add the beef and spices, and just enough broth to cover the ingredients. I bring it all to a boil, turn the heat down to simmer and stop.

Here is the biggest secret of all.

We could eat the stew now and it would be good, but not perfect. And for those of you who have ever experienced the difference between good and perfect know the chasm is great. No, that stew will simmer all day long. We'll give it the occasional light stir and taste test otherwise we'll leave it to do what it needs to do.

The anticipation grows throughout the day as the smell of comfort works its way through the house. If it is a nice day, the smell will rush through us when we get back from a lazy walk along one of our favorite trails. If it’s gray and cold, it will wrap itself around us like a cozy blanket while we enjoy something light on Netflix.

At some point, it just becomes the right time. Neither of us can describe this in words. After all this time, we just know.

She throws the bread in the oven. I add the the potatoes to the simmering pot. As we wait for everything to be ready, we clear the table. And if we didn’t clean as we cooked earlier, we quickly get that caught up too.

We pull out bowls or big mugs, mostly determined by where we will be eating. I slice the bread. And then, finally, we fill our containers, butter our bread, and then sit down to eat. We are lifted up with a comfort and warmness that could break through the greyest, coldest, wettest day in the Pacific Northwest.

It’s not the stew that lifts you. It’s the entire process that led to the stew. The time and patience, the planning and execution, the partnership, and the anticipation that something amazing waited at the end of the journey.

“Good” is relatively easy to achieve, and for most things in our lives, it’s good enough. But for as long as we live, the stew must be perfect.