# Stew Meat?



## superdave (Nov 7, 2014)

I see where a lot of you smoke chuck roasts and wondered if anyone has smoked stew meat since I believe it is just cut up chuck roast.  I thought it might be like a burnt end?


----------



## Bearcarver (Nov 7, 2014)

SuperDave said:


> I see where a lot of you smoke chuck roasts and wondered if anyone has smoked stew meat since I believe it is just cut up chuck roast.  I thought it might be like a burnt end?


Probably not a bad idea-----A couple years ago a Chucky was about $1.99 a lb around here.

Now it's $4.99 !!  2 years ago I could get Choice Prime Rib for $4.99 !!!

Bear


----------



## nedtorious (Nov 7, 2014)

Yes, I've done this. I had the same idea as you on the burnt ends! The problem is that by the time the pieces get tender they are bone dry!  They sure are tasty though.

I should mention however, the stew meat came calves we raised on our farm. They were probably a lot leaner than what you find in the grocery store.

I wonder what would happen if you wrapped them in bacon? Hmmm?


----------



## b-one (Nov 7, 2014)

Mmmmmmm bacon!!!!!


----------



## superdave (Nov 7, 2014)

I was thinking that because of the size to surface area, they wouldn't need a whole lot of smoke time before wrapping.  Besides burnt end idea, I was going to run with the sheperds pie theme and make a full on beef pot pie.


----------



## nedtorious (Nov 7, 2014)

Shepard's pie sounds like a plan to me!

Is it still called a Shepard's pie if you use beef? Cowboy's Pie?


----------



## historic foodie (Nov 7, 2014)

If you want to be technical about it, NEDtorious, to be a Shepard's pie it has to use lamb or (rarely) mutton.

Using beef or other proteins makes it a cottage pie. In some locales, using the same technique with venison, people call it a deerstalker pie. But that's not very common.

Difference between cottage pies and pot pies, of course, is that the former uses mashed potatoes as a topping, and the latter uses a paste crust.


----------



## nedtorious (Nov 7, 2014)

Hey, Ive heard of deerstalker pie, but I never new what it was! Thanks for the info HF!


----------



## timberjet (Nov 7, 2014)

chilli anyone? I like to skewer them up and smoke then add to chilli. Last time I did this I marinaded the stew meat in coffee overnight. Very good and the coffee tenderizes the beef some.


----------



## superdave (Nov 7, 2014)

Baking is one of my other passions so I'm going work on making a pot pie.


----------



## oldschoolbbq (Nov 8, 2014)

Intresting , about the names... and cool we have a Historian now 
	

	
	
		
		



		
			






  , welcome Foodie.

Oh , the Chuck will make great smoked Stew... be sure to Q-view...


----------



## dirtsailor2003 (Nov 8, 2014)

We used to smoke stew meat all the time for use in all kinds of recipes. It's too expensive now, $5.99 per pound!!! Still get it now and again for soups stews chili and my Shepards pie, which has beef and a tater topping!


----------



## oldeboone (Nov 8, 2014)

I can tell you bacon works wonders on a deer roast. Boone


----------



## historic foodie (Nov 9, 2014)

_It's too expensive now,......_

Y'all remember when cookbooks and newspaper/magazine articles talked about using cheap cuts?

Yeah, right!


----------



## superdave (Nov 14, 2014)

Okay, the experiment will start tomorrow.  I'm thinking 1/2 smoke and 1/2 braise to keep it from drying out.


----------



## turick (Nov 14, 2014)

Can't wait to hear about it.  I was REAL close to cubing my a chuck roast on Wednesday before smoking it instead of after.  Saw it done in this thread as well (granted I don't know what cut of meat he is using):

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/171174/smoked-beef-stroganoff-w-pics


----------



## ssorllih (Nov 14, 2014)

Stew is a recipe or method of meat and vegetables in a gravy. We can use any meat and any blend of veggies. There are as many variations for stew as there are for soup. We could use all of the leftovers from a Q and combine them for a good stew.


----------



## squirrel (Nov 14, 2014)

I like to cook the whole darn thing on the smoker. I brown off the pieces either on the grill or the stove, then dump it all in the DO and on to the smoker. Lovely flavors. It's always better the next day though. I usually fridge over night, remove the fat cap if there is one, and reheat. I cooked this batch on the Primo XL. If I'm lucky enough to get a fat cap I save it in the freezer and grind it up with my next batch of burgers.













IMG_1511.jpg



__ squirrel
__ Aug 11, 2011


----------



## ssorllih (Nov 14, 2014)

There must have been a time when all food cooking was done on, in, over or near an open fire so all of the food received at least some smoke during the cooking. Perhaps that is why nobody doesn't like smoked meat some of the time.


----------



## historic foodie (Nov 14, 2014)

Not as long ago as you may think. Although they were around before than, "portable" cast iron stoves didn't start to become really common until the 1820s. Before that, cooking was done primarily on a hearth or over an open fire.

There were, to be sure, other methods. But far and away, cooking in and around a fireplace or over an open fire were the most common.


----------



## Bearcarver (Nov 14, 2014)

ssorllih said:


> There must have been a time when all food cooking was done on, in, over or near an open fire so all of the food received at least some smoke during the cooking. Perhaps that is why nobody doesn't like smoked meat some of the time.


Yup----A long time ago!!!
[h3]How Did Cooking Begin?[/h3]
How Did Cooking Begin?
Perhaps by accident, although anthropologists are still arguing about this. One theory is that an out of control fire burned down a hut and accidently cooked some pigs. People wandered in, tried the cooked meat and liked it.
	

		
			
		

		
	








Another theory is that a forest fire first roasted meat; still others think that cooking was a more deliberate, controlled act by humans. In any case, now there were more options than raw bar and tartare.

It was cooking but how about cuisine? Cuisine can be defined a self conscious tradition of cooking and eating, with a set of attitude about food and its place in the life of man.

So cuisine requires not just a style of cooking but an awareness about how the food is prepared and consumed.

It must also a wide variety of ingredients, more than are locally available and cooks and diners willing to experiments which means they are not constricted by tradition.

Since early humans were still eating to survive and had no control over their food supply, it was not cuisine.

Nobody knows exactly how people mastered fire and started cooking their food, we only know when - between 500,000 and one million years ago.

Roasting over an open fire probably the first cooking method. Pit roasting – putting food in a pit with burning embers and covering it - might have come next.

Then spit roasting, when hunters came home with the animal already on a spear and decided to cook it by hanging it over the fire and turning it.

With sharp tools, meat could be cut into smaller pieces to make it cook faster. Food could be boiled large mollusk or turtle shells where they were available, or even in animal skins, but pots were not invented until around 10,000 BC and there were no sturdy clay boiling pits until about 5000 BC.

Cooking in such vessels would probably have produced bacterial contamination, since there was no soap and no effective way to clean them.


----------



## historic foodie (Nov 15, 2014)

Don't know who wrote that, Bearcarver, but it's filled with unenlightened speculation and erroneous assumptions of the worst kind---as bad as the myth that our forebears used spices to cover the taste and smell of rancid meat. Just weren't so.

Just one example, of many: A spear represents capital goods of the highest order. It's a precision tool that takes a long time to produce. In some cultures a boy made his first spear as a rite of passage into adulthood. In those places where atl-atls were used, spears were even harder to produce, because the two tools had to be balanced to each other.

Do you really think anybody was so lazy that they'd use one as a spit, and chance damaging it? Not hardly!


----------



## ameskimo1 (Nov 15, 2014)

I don't know, I wasn't there. But happy someone figured it out long before God graced me on this planet!


----------



## Bearcarver (Nov 15, 2014)

LOL----The article I posted said nothing about using spices to cover the taste of rancid meat.

Also the article is talking about people starting to cook their food somewhere between 500,000 years ago & 1million years ago.

Then goes on to mention that pots were not invented until around 10,000 BC.

So I doubt if people in those earliest days were worried about having 2 tools that were balanced to each other.

The use of spears dates back 400,000 years, but the use of the atlati you speak of goes no farther back than 21,000 years ago.

None of this has anything to do with my reason for posting the article. I posted it to say cooking with fire in one form or another started somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million years BC, which in my book is a long time ago. I only posted the whole article because you can't post links, and I didn't want to take 2 sentences out of context.

This was an answer to a comment about cooking with fire, and wasn't meant to be a statement of scientific exacting fact. Lighten up.

I'm done with this topic.

Bear


----------



## superdave (Nov 15, 2014)

I guess I'll start a new thread when the meat goes in the smoker.  LOL!!! 

BTW, it is super foggy here today so should be an interesting smoke.


----------



## red dog (Nov 15, 2014)

Yah, lighten up. I made a spear last summer and it took me about 5 minutes. I killed a hotdog with it and used it to roast it on an open fire. Then I threw it in the fire. I'll make another one next time I want to kill a hotdog.


----------



## gary s (Nov 15, 2014)

Well said Bear,  I got what you were responding to. 

Gary


----------

