You can make a stew recipe by simmering your ingredients on the stove on a low heat and most people make stew recipes in this way. There are also other ways to make stews. Maybe you have a slow cooker or a dutch oven. Both of these can be used to make wonderful chicken stew.
Dutch Oven Stew Cooking Tips
A dutch oven, which is also known as a stockpot, casserole or french oven, is a handy addition to the kitchen. A dutch oven is thicker and heavier than a stockpot, which means it can conduct heat more effectively and distribute it throughout the food with ease. You can use a dutch oven to make braised meals, pot roasts, stews and much more. You can sear food in the dutch oven on the stove and then put the whole thing in the oven to finish cooking. You can boil pasta or rice in a dutch oven and they are good for deep frying because of their high sides.
If you want to make a chicken stew recipe or something, similar you can brown the meat in batches in the dutch oven. It will brown easily and you can brown more at one time than if you had to use a smaller pot. You can cook the stew on the stove or in the oven, using the dutch oven as the cooking pot.
Cast iron is a good choice for a dutch oven but iron does react with some foods. Some dutch oven manufacturers put a layer of enamel on the iron and others preseason the pots by spraying oil into them and baking it on. It is possible to erode the preseasoning away, making enamel the best choice.
Stew in a Slow Cooker – Cooking Tips
Using a slow cooker, sometimes called a crockpot, is a great cooking method to use with stew recipes. If you want to make stew in a crockpot, it is quite straightforward. First, you have to brown the chicken or meat. Then you add the other ingredients, perhaps vegetables, bouillon, herbs, spices and potatoes, and leave it to cook over a medium heat for five or six hours or a low heat for about eight hours.
A slow cooker is great for cooking stews because the flavors have plenty of time to mingle well and the meat or chicken will be extremely tender.
If you are going to be out of the house all day but you want to get home to a tasty homemade chicken stew, a crockpot would be your perfect tool. It might only take an hour or so to make a stew in a normal pan but when you are hungry, that is too long to wait and having your evening meal all ready for you is a very nice luxury after a long day at work.
It is well worth buying a crockpot because there are literally hundreds of slow cooker recipes for it. A slow cooker comes with instructions and basic cooking tips so you can start making wonderful stew recipes immediately.