In My Mother's Kitchen: Beef Stew
Last week we talked about potatoes. One dish I didn't mention there beef stew, which as made by my other featured potatoes as an important component, along side carrots and celery. My mother made beef stew in her stove top pressure cooker, which I don't recall being pulled out for any other recipe.
In general, my mother was not a big fan of single-use kitchen devices. Granted, the range of available single-use kitchen devices was a lot smaller back in the 1980s than it is now. On my now long outdated ranking of seven kitchen devices I owed back in 2010 my mother owned but three: a blender, a toaster oven and a waffle iron. Of these, only the toaster oven was used with any frequency. If I had to rank her top 3 kitchen devices from back then, it would go something like:
- Microwave. My mother was an enthusiastic adopter of the microwave oven back when it was cutting edge kitchen technology. We had a larger countertop device that she used all the time. Even now, many of the recipes she put in my cookbook make assumptions based on her microwave.
- Oven/Stove. We had an electric stove & oven when I was growing up. I never actually cooked with gas with any regularity until I moved into the fraternity house, or given how little I cooked there perhaps more accurately until I had an apartment.
- Toaster oven. When I was younger, it was mostly for toast. As I got older, Mom realized she could avoid heating the whole house with the main oven and started using it more frequently. We got her a really fancy one for her birthday a few years back.
She did own other items that would make an occasional appearance, and I'm sure some of them will turn up in future posts, but those were the big three. The pressure pot belonged to a much smaller group of items that were only used for one recipe. I remember the whistle of the pot almost as much as I remember the end results. As I never owned a pressure pot until M got me an Instant Pot, I tended to make beef stew in the crock pot (to name another device my mother never had) and never noticed a particular difference in the outcome. Whether it was the cooking method or the cut of meat, I remember the beef in her stew falling apart when the fork was applied. Since my beef stew was also very good, and I gave up red meat anyway, I've never asked Mom for her recipe.
With that said, the idea of cooking on the stove with something that could be a bomb if used incorrectly doesn't much appeal to me. For the record, I have no recollection of Mom ever having any problem with the pressure cooker, and our kitchen never exploded. Since many of my friends seem to have a story about relative (usually a mother or grandmother) managing to forget about the pressure cooker and having the lid fly off, perhaps we were fortunate. Or maybe the locking mechanism on her pressure pot was very strong.
In general, my mother was not a big fan of single-use kitchen devices. Granted, the range of available single-use kitchen devices was a lot smaller back in the 1980s than it is now. On my now long outdated ranking of seven kitchen devices I owed back in 2010 my mother owned but three: a blender, a toaster oven and a waffle iron. Of these, only the toaster oven was used with any frequency. If I had to rank her top 3 kitchen devices from back then, it would go something like:
- Microwave. My mother was an enthusiastic adopter of the microwave oven back when it was cutting edge kitchen technology. We had a larger countertop device that she used all the time. Even now, many of the recipes she put in my cookbook make assumptions based on her microwave.
- Oven/Stove. We had an electric stove & oven when I was growing up. I never actually cooked with gas with any regularity until I moved into the fraternity house, or given how little I cooked there perhaps more accurately until I had an apartment.
- Toaster oven. When I was younger, it was mostly for toast. As I got older, Mom realized she could avoid heating the whole house with the main oven and started using it more frequently. We got her a really fancy one for her birthday a few years back.
She did own other items that would make an occasional appearance, and I'm sure some of them will turn up in future posts, but those were the big three. The pressure pot belonged to a much smaller group of items that were only used for one recipe. I remember the whistle of the pot almost as much as I remember the end results. As I never owned a pressure pot until M got me an Instant Pot, I tended to make beef stew in the crock pot (to name another device my mother never had) and never noticed a particular difference in the outcome. Whether it was the cooking method or the cut of meat, I remember the beef in her stew falling apart when the fork was applied. Since my beef stew was also very good, and I gave up red meat anyway, I've never asked Mom for her recipe.
With that said, the idea of cooking on the stove with something that could be a bomb if used incorrectly doesn't much appeal to me. For the record, I have no recollection of Mom ever having any problem with the pressure cooker, and our kitchen never exploded. Since many of my friends seem to have a story about relative (usually a mother or grandmother) managing to forget about the pressure cooker and having the lid fly off, perhaps we were fortunate. Or maybe the locking mechanism on her pressure pot was very strong.