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Delicious 4-Ingredient Boursin Stew Recipe (Slow Cooker)

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4-Ingredient Stew

I am in the UK right now, specifically the Isle of Wight. It’s cold, rainy, and slow cooker stew has been on the menu more nights than not.

This particular 4-Ingredient Stew (and that includes the sea salt!) has been made four times this week alone!

So easy, maybe the easiest dinner I’ve ever made.

So delicious, easily one of our favorite’s.

The main secret ingredient…

Apart from the wonderfully tender beef, the main secret ingredient is the Boursin “garlic and cheese” spread. If you’ve had it, you know. If you haven’t had it, you’re welcome.

Boursin cheese is wonderfully addictive. So creamy, flavorful, and delicious. In fact, I think I’ll go search on Pinterest for this item, I’ll bet there are tons of recipes.

Let’s make this slow cooker stew!

2 of the 4 ingredients

4-Ingredient Stew Recipe (Slow Cooker)

  • 12 to 16 ounces stew beef (or your choice of beef cut)
  • Sea salt
  • 1 box or can of tomatoes (crushed, puréed, or whatever, your choice)
  • 1 package Boursin “garlic and cheese” spread
  • Slow cooker! (You could use a pressure cooker, like my favorite Instant Pot, too but those directions would be a bit different)

Directions:

  1. Season the beef with the salt.
  2. Pour the tomatoes into the slow cooker, smash if needed. Add the seasoned beef. Turn the slow cooker on to low or high, your choice. If it’s low, it might take up to 8 hours for fork-tender beef. If it’s high, it might be done in 4 hours. You decide and then check on it. If it’s not fork tender, wait another 30-60 minutes before checking again.
  3. When it’s tender, scoop in the whole package of cheese and stir it around.

Done.

Tonight, I’m making a twist on the recipe. I’m cooking ground beef in a skillet with the tomatoes, then stirring in the Boursin cheese and serving on top of pasta. Oh yeah. 🙌🏼

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Holiday Recipe Roundup

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Holiday recipe time. I wrote this post filled for myself – I wanted an easy way to access my best holiday recipes on my blog in one place. Some are raw vegan recipes and some are for the omnivore crowd. Even though I am not vegan anymore, I certainly still enjoy and love many vegan recipes.

Holiday Chia Pudding Recipe

Holiday Chia Pudding

This holiday recipe made the rounds heavily when I first introduced it because it is so creamy, delicious, and full of holiday flavors. Healthy, too. That’s what makes it a winner. Healthy and fabulous.

[Read more…] about Holiday Recipe Roundup

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Strange Meals: My Breakfast Chocolate Salad

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Starting the day with a chocolate salad

I like having salads for breakfast because they’re fresh, crisp, and get my day started with vegetables. My daughter does, too. One day I simply presented it for breakfast and she ate it. No questions.

Why not?

And, why not pancakes for dinner? Or sourdough french toast for lunch?

My daughter is also keen for pizza at breakfast (frozen gluten-free crust cooked with organic tomato sauce or tomato paste, sea salt, and raw, grass-fed, mozzarella cheese). It takes longer to make than a bowl of cereal (something we’ve never done in our house), but it’s worth the extra few minutes.

Miso soup is a great breakfast, too, especially on a chilly winter morning. Try that instead of coffee. Well, maybe not instead of, but perhaps after your first cup.

Omelets for lunch slathered in grass-fed whole-fat Greek yogurt. Yes.

Some nights we do savory oatmeal mixed with scrambled eggs.

Mix up the meals, no need to stick to tradition. Doing so can make it easier on you, because you can cook in the moment, with what you have on hand. Trust me, the family will enjoy it.

I even fed my family dessert for dinner one night. Whoa, that was a fun surprise… Grass-fed ice cream with gluten-free chocolate chip cookies.

My Breakfast Chocolate Salad:

  • Organic romaine lettuce
  • Organic olive oil, courtesy of Apollo Olive Oil from California (polyphenol rich and fabulous!)*
  • Balsamic vinegar
  • Dark chocolate with ginger
  • Dried cranberries
  • Freshly grated parmesan cheese
  • Macadamia nuts
  • Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Toss it together. Start the day right.

* I’m on an epic olive oil kick right now. Ever since I was enlightened to the fact that you can cook with extra virgin olive oil, I started consuming more. Funny though, the learning inspired me to buy more but then I started eating more salads and drizzling it raw on everything. Still(!), one can (and should) cook with it. More on that here. In my search for TRUE olive oil, because did you know they’re not all “true” (more on that in future posts or just read this book, Extra Virginity), I learned about the throat burn of olive oils, high polyphenols, processing, origins, health benefits, etc. I’m Italian and I should’ve known as much, but I didn’t. Better late than never.

This olive oil from Apollo Olive Oil keeps it local, California, and is a trusted source for TRUE olive oil. It’s fabulous. One of my favorite aspects is the bottle – it should always be a dark container and never clear glass – I love it’s pouring spout and wood top. Adorable. Smart. Delicious.

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The Perfect Black Beans (Instant Pot, Of Course)

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I only cook black beans using the Instant Pot.

Black beans in the Instant Pot pressure cooker… that’s the only way I’ll cook ’em cuz I’m guaranteed an easy experience.

Instant Pot for the win. Again.

The Instant Pot cooks them faster and better, plus supposedly making them easier on the digestion.

Win. Win. Win.

I usually cook about 2 cups (that’s 2-cups dried, before soaking, amount), which yields plenty with which to enjoy in various ways.

  • Soak the beans overnight for the best experience (or at a minimum soak them in the morning to cook for that night’s dinner). This means you put the beans in a fairly large bowl, depending on the amount you’re soaking, and add enough water to more than cover them because they’re going to soak up a lot of water. Let them soak on the counter, no need to refrigerate.
  • Drain off the water.
  • Put them in the Instant Pot.
  • Add enough fresh water to “healthily more” than cover them.
  • Put the lid on correctly. Power it to HIGH pressure for 25 minutes.
  • Once the timer is done, let the pressure release naturally, slowly.
  • Enjoy your beans. Top on salads, mix with salsa and cooked rice, add to soups, throw on top of some scrambled eggs.

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Instant Pot Yogurt – One of My Favorite Things to Make

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Homemade yogurt from the Instant Pot.

I usually like making a lot of things homemade… and yogurt is one of them. (I draw the line at ice cream anymore these days though.)

I used to make yogurt a lot back when I used my Sous Vide. It was fairly easy, but not without its hassles, so after awhile I stopped. After getting an Instant Pot and hearing how easy it was, I had to try.

Super easy. Saves money. Awesome.

Did I mention that it SAVES MONEY?

I’m hooked. It’s one of the best reasons for getting an Instant Pot, other than how an Instant Pot helps my family eat like 4X as many veggies, turning cheap cuts of meat tender super fast, and more.

Probiotics. Gut Health.

Yogurt in the Instant Pot

Yield 2 quarts.

  • 1/2 gallon whole-fat milk (I buy grass-fed)
  • 2 tablespoons yogurt with good cultures you have on hand (I buy Straus Greek*, Whole-Fat)

1) Pour the milk only into the Instant Pot.

  • Press “Yogurt” button, then press the “Adjust” button until the screen reads “boil” (pictured below).
  • Place the lid on, it doesn’t need to be locked or sealed.
  • Take the lid off and stir the heating milk a few times during the heating, replacing the lid each time you take it off.
  • You want to get the milk to 180 degrees F. This takes about 25 to 30 minutes. Take the lid off to test the temperature with a thermometer when the Instant Pot claims it’s done.
  • If it doesn’t actually reach 180 degrees F by the time it claims it’s done, turn the saute feature on (low) and cook, stirring frequently, until 180 degrees is really reached. (It happens like that on occasion.)

 

2) Take the lid off, if not already. Turn the Instant Pot off, if not already. Let the milk cool until it reaches 105 to 110 degrees F.

  • To speed up the cooling, remove the insert from the Instant Pot and place on a cooling rack, or in a cold water bath if really in a hurry. Generally the cooling takes from 20 to 45 minutes depending on whether you take the insert out or keep it in the Instant Pot to cool.

3) Put the insert back into the Instant Pot base if you took it out for cooling.

  • Place the 2 tablespoons of yogurt into a separate cup and ladle some of the cooled milk into the cup. Stir to mix. Transfer this mixture into the Instant Pot and stir to gently mix. (If you forget to stir the yogurt and some of the cooled milk together in a separate cup before putting it into the main batch of cooling milk – i.e., you put the two tablespoons of yogurt straight into the big batch of cooling milk – no biggie, just stir it all gently and thoroughly.)

4) Place the lid back on.

  • Again, it doesn’t need to be locked. Press YOGURT (normal). Adjust time to 10 to 12 hours based on preference. The longer the tangier (I usually do 12 hours). Walk away. Leave alone. (I usually do this part overnight).

5) When it’s done and the screen reads YOGURT, transfer the insert and lid to the refrigerator to chill / set for 3 to 4 hours.

6) When it’s chilled, then you can whisk it (not necessary but I like to).

7) Ladle into 2 quart mason jars (or smaller serving glass jars). Store in the refrigerator.

  • From here you can use 2 tablespoons of this fresh yogurt to make future batches. If you accidentally eat it all and forget to save a couple of tablespoons, buy a yogurt from the store to start another fresh batch.

*Note: I usually have Greek yogurt on hand because Kamea loves it, and that’s why I use it to culture the milk into yogurt using my Instant Pot. However, you can use any good yogurt. Using a Greek yogurt will not make your Instant Pot yogurt a Greek yogurt. To do that, you’d have to strain the whey off the yogurt you make for a Greek yogurt.

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs

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Inspired by any recipe using minimal ingredients, I was massively intrigued by the 2-ingredient Nutella Brownies I saw online: Nutella + Eggs.

We don’t eat Nutella, so I figured I’d make my own version, requiring 3 ingredients instead.

  • Organic peanut butter
  • Organic chocolate bar
  • Eggs

I didn’t do much in the way of measuring other than an estimate of about a cup total between the peanut butter and chocolate (warmed on stove to make liquid-ish) plus 4 eggs.

The eggs get the crap beaten out of them to increase their volume and supposedly make less egg-tasting but… more on that in a bit.

Mix the warmed chocolate mixture with the eggs and bake in a greased baking dish for about 20 minutes (350 degrees or thereabouts).

It looks impressive.

It tastes less so.

In spite of beating my eggs a lot, I thought it tasted like chocolate peanut butter eggs instead of brownies.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad… just need to create expectations.

It needed to be sweeter so we drizzled maple syrup on one serving and tried another with strawberry jelly. (My chocolate bar was the organic dark chocolate from Trader Joe’s with pecans and raisins in the light blue wrapper – so not super dark chocolate.)

Sort of tasty (and interesting, to be sure). Just not brownies.

Kamea and Greg enjoyed them well enough that’d I’d probably make again. Maybe… now that I know what to expect.

A fun experiment to be sure. 🙌🏼

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