Beef Slow Cooked Casserole

Our church have been running an 8 week cooking on a budget croup. One of the ladies in our church has been showing us some of her recipes and tricks of the trade when it comes to cooking for a family.

I wasn't there the night she cooked this so I wanted to try it. Reading the recipe and after having tasted some of her other recipes I wanted to reduce the amounts of some of the ingredients and change some of them. Harry and Katrina are not the fussed on highly spiced food so this is my version of her slow cooked Casserole.

I had some yucas needed using up so I add them as an extra vegetable.

500-600g casserole meat, diced
2 onions, chopped
2 tsp crushed garlic (2 cloves)
1 tsp each; curry powder and paprika
1 (400gr) can chopped tomatoes
1-2 carrots sliced or diced
2 cups beef stock
2 tbsp tomato sauce
2 tbsp Worcester sauce
1 dsp oil
3 tbsp cornflour
other vegetables cut small if desired

Method:
Preheat the oven to 150°C (or 180 - see below)
Heat on high heat a fry pan or large pot and add the oil.
Once that is hot, fry meat in batches to ‘seal’ or lightly brown.
Add this to a casserole dish as you finish the rest.
Add onion and crushed garlic to the pan and cook until translucent.
Add curry and paprika and fry for another 30 secs – add to meat and stir around.
Reduce heat to medium and add chopped tomatoes to pan to lift off residue from meat frying and pour into casserole.
I now add the chopped carrots and any other vegetables I may be using to the pan and heat.
Add to casserole.
Mix the tomato and Worcester sauce into the beef stock, stir well, pour into pan to ‘collect’ all the last bits of the last ingredients.
Set aside and save about half a cup of this stock and add the rest to the casserole.
Stir well and cook uncovered for 3 – 5 hours or till tender at 150°C. If you want this to cook quicker, cover and cook at 180°C for at least 2 hours.
Stir a few times during cooking so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the dish.
In the last 30 mins of cooking, mix the cornflour in the last amount of stock mixture to a smooth paste and stir through meat mixture then continue cooking.
Serve with rice or mashed spuds.

We also had some lightly steamed broccoli to add a bit of colour.