Slow cooker beef goulash

I love the idea of slow cooker meals. Throwing a load of ingredients together in the morning then turning up at tea time to find a tasty meal ready to eat is cooking heaven as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve got a large slow cooker at home, which means that I can cook a large meal if we have friends over, or batch cook, which is what I did with this meal (one to eat, one for the freezer).

This recipe does involve some prep before its put in the slow cooker. Frying the meat and onions helps add flavour to the meal but if you’re in a rush you could skip that part – it’s going in the slow cooker for 7 hours so there’s no chance that it won’t be fully cooked!

There is quite a lot of liquid in this meal because the ingredients need to be covered in order to cook properly. Slow cooker sauces tend to be very thin because of this, and because of the long cooking time. The flour and sour cream in this recipe both help to thicken the liquid but if you want to reduce the sauce you can take the lid off the slow cooker for the last half hour or so.

Its best not to lift the lid while cooking unless you’re trying to reduce the sauce, though.  This meal won’t need stirring and taking the lid off lets the heat escape, increasing the cooking time.

This meal gives you protein, carbs and veg so there isn’t any need for you to serve it with anything else but I did give the kids some crusty bread so they could mop up the sauce.

Ingredients

Serves 3 adults

• 450g braising or stewing steak
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 medium potatoes, cut into chunks
• 1 large sweet potato, cut into chunks
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 300ml beef stock
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp paprika
• 2 tbsp sour cream
• 2 tbsp cooking oil

Method

1. Add the oil and braising steak to a saucepan and fry for a few minutes until just turning brown.
2. Add the flour and paprika and stir well to coat the beef. Then add the beef stock. Stir again to loosen any flour or paprika stuck to the bottom of the saucepan, then pour the mixture into the slow cooker with the potato and sweet potato.
3. Add the onions and carrots to the frying pan with the rest of the oil. Fry for a few minutes until the onion starts to soften then add the tinned tomatoes, stir and add this mixture to the slow cooker with the beef mixture. 
   

   
4. Make sure the potatoes and meat are covered by the cooking liquid (these take the longest to cook) and cook on low for 7 hours.
5. Just before serving stir in the sour cream.

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