Deli Roast Beef & Cabbage Stew

I have a small kitchen so I make a lot of one pot or pan dishes, and I love my slow cookers or crock pots. Slow cookers are great I put all the ingredients in the crock in the morning and dinner is ready by dinnertime. My slow cooker has 3 crocks a 2 liter, a 4 liter, and a 6 liter. I am also cheap and the first dish is six liters of Roast Beef and Cabbage Stew for less than $6.oo.

The ingredients are simple.

Deli Roast Beef ends

Cabbage

Carrots

Potatoes

Onions

Garlic

Fresh, Canned or Tomato Soup.

Pepper

Every once in a while deli meat ends go on sale where I shop for groceries. It is good meat just not perfect enough for prepackaged deli meats. They come in 2 pound packages of beef, chicken, turkey, and ham, for $3 to $5 a package. That works out to $1.50 to $250 a pound for meet that normally sells for $6 a pound.

I take half the roast beef and dice it then place the diced roast beef in my crock pot. When you cook this meet do not add salt, deli meats have added salt and spices in them. If you add salt and spices before cooking you can make the stew to salty or spicy.

The remainder of the roast beef I grind up for a different dish which I will show you later.

Start with half a large cabbage or one small cabbage.

The easiest way to dice cabbage is to cut the cabbage in half then quarter it.

Once the cabbage is quartered the hart is easy to cut out and dice the cabbage placing the pieces in the crock pot.

Start with three good size carrots; I like to wash my carrots with a scrub pad removing any secondary roots and the thin skin.

Then I remove any bad parts and quarter the carrots length wise, after quartering the carrots I cut them up into bite size pieces and add them to the crock pot.

I do the same to four medium potatoes and dice up a good sized inion.

If you have fresh or canned tomatoes you can dice them up and add them to the crock pot now.

Most people find garlic a pain to peel and dice, so I am going to share one of my secrets to peeling and dicing garlic.

I take the cloves of garlic and place them on my cutting board.

I take my big heavy curved meat cleaver and smack the cloves of garlic with the side of the cleaver.

The garlic skins literally fall off.

Then I rock the sharp curved edge of my meat cleaver over the garlic until it is diced the size I want.

If you don’t have a heavy meat cleaver, just smack the garlic with a coffee cup and cut the garlic up with a curved knife rocking the knife like my meat cleaver.

Now that you have most of your ingredients in the pot add water until you can just see it under the ingredients. Do not add water until the water covers the ingredients or you will be making soup not stew. Cover the pot and set the crock size in this case to 6 liter and the dial on high to simmer for 6 hours.

Since I did not have fresh or canned tomatoes I added Tomato Soup and black pepper after tasting the broth and let the stew simmer until dinner time.

I like to serve the stew with a side of toast or crackers.

Since I started my stew first thing in the morning and everything was in the crock pot cooking it was time for me to have breakfast.

1 small potato

1 large egg

2 tablespoons ground deli roast beef

1 teaspoon flower

Bread and cheese

Wash and grate one small potato and place in a mixing bowl. OK I used a measuring cup.

Add 2 tablespoons ground deli roast beef.

Add 1 large egg.

Last add 1 teaspoon flower and stir until mixed.

I like my little cast iron frying pan, it is just the right size to cook breakfast for one and I am so use to it my eggs never stick. The trick to your eggs never sticking, bring the pan up to heat before adding your eggs or any other meat.

Place the cold cast iron pan on the burner and add your butter, as the pan heats up the butter melts. As the pan heats up even more the water in the butter boils off making the butter bubble. When the butter stops bubbling and the butter starts to turn a light brown turn down the heat to medium and add the deli roast beef hash you mixed earlier.

While you wait for the one side to brown toast a couple slices of bread, this should only take a minute or two. Flip the hash over and wait for the other side to brown. By this time your toast is ready, place the toast on a plate and add a couple slices of cheese.

Once the other side of the deli roast beef hash is browned it is ready to place on top of the toast and cheese and serve.