What protein do you add to stretch meat?

[Procrastoolate]

Say recipe for a standard beef stew for 4 people, but you want it to last to feed 8. What's the best (cheap) protein to add that won't wreck the taste?
Beans - which type?
or lentils - again which ones?
I'm assuming tofu or a tin of chickpeas would be weird or would that work?

I liked green lentils with beef

I quite like butter beans

Id also shove it full of mushrooms

Red lentils seem to just disappear in, and I can never taste them. I haven't done it for ages though - would need to google what the rule is with soaking them.

Peas actually work really well - I just add frozen ones.

Yes
butter beans
green lentils
pearl barley
suet dumplings
carrots
sprouts
maybe potatoes
mushrooms
kale

then loads of sides
mash
carroy and suede mash
red cabbage
bread and butter
some sort of steamed green veg

that’s a weeks worth of meals out of one meal

I just rinse and chuck them in to cook in the gravy

Green lentils, pasta

With beef I would go green lentils, I often add some to chilli.

Dried red lentils are good with beef, and don't need precooking. Otherwise I usually add one of tinned green lentils, cannelini, pinto or haricot beans. My DC are funny about butter beans texture with them being bigger so I don't put them into a stew. Kidney beans and black beans have a stronger flavour so I normally only use in a recipe intending to use them, and chickpeas have a more crunchy texture so I find stand out rather than blend, and my DC won't eat them.

You can hide butter beans in mashed potato though if you wanted to leave the stew alone and up the protein content elsewhere, you just boil them with the potatoes for the last 10 minutes and then mash them up together.

Mushrooms, preferably chestnut, and preferably large ones cut into chunks.

I think beans or any other 'protein' would be weird in stew. So if I didn't have enough meat to make stew, I'd add more veg or make a slow cooked chilli with loads of beans/chick peas instead.

Pearl barley

Butter beans, white haricot beans, kidney beans or puy lentils would all work in a beef stew.
Chickpeas go well with anything spicy, eg tagine.
Puy lentil go well with lamb.
White haricot beans go well with pork, (or anything with tomatoes) eg the classic French combination of beans & pork in Cassoulet.

How devoted are you to making a classic beefy stew? I think mushrooms would be a legitimate addition and not be too much out of the way but how forgiving are your diners of things like pearl barley, lentils and butter beans?

Are you willing to diversify into a kind of improvised/cheats/bastardised Baeckoeffe? Porky Pig is still much cheaper than beef and you can kind of forget the lamb choppy bit because, "It was in there, you just didn't get a piece."

https://gdaysouffle.com/baeckeoffe-alsatian-stew/

It's sort of Alsation Lancashire hotpot.

I'd add red lentils and mushrooms

I shove a few handfuls of red lentils into almost everything. If I don’t want to see the lentils I cook it down longer, like a beef stew, I put tons of vegetables in to bulk it out as well.
something like bolognese or cottage pie I want the lentils to add bulk more so I don’t cook them down in it for as long.

I have two fussy kids (and a fussy dh) who would say they hate lentils if you asked but they don’t realise that they’re in a lot of our meals without them noticing.

DC will eat lentils and beans but not mushrooms. I wanted to do something a bit different than pork as we seem to be either eating that or tofu at the moment. I've a bottomless pit of a teenager at the moment so wanted to bulk with extra protein rather than excessive veg.

I don't know whether my red lentils are weird but I always have to cook them in water and and a bit of bicarb beforehand to make them into invisible thickener.

Another vote for green lentils with beef, they disappear in to it quite well (if that’s what you want them to do).

To stretch a beef stew, I'd add pearl barely, dumplings or more carrots, peas, sweet corn, parsnip, turnip, potatoes and even chunky cut green beans.

I absolutely would not add legume type beans to one.

To make big batch slow cooker meals, I do chilli con carne but add several types of beans, sweet corn and mushrooms.

Moroccan bean casserole with diced lamb or turkey. Chickpeas, kidney beans, borlotti beans, haricot and/or cannellini beans.

Sausage and lentil casserole with carrots, Peppers, onions.

Yes. I am getting a bit sick of pork myself. Point taken. I wonder sometimes if all the seasoning it up with all the tricks in the kitchen cupboard of really quite tasteless ingredients and the fuel costs of making a slow cooked dish actually makes it any cheaper?

If you want more protein, bobotie is a good recipe.

My friend stirs in baked beans at the end when cooking a stew. It's actually lovely.

I'd do cheesy dumplings instead. Then mix a can of butter or cannellini beans in with the mash before you mash it up. Sweetcorn or green veg in a stew are wrong!

I did lamb and barley soup on Sunday and today I chucked a whole pot of cottage cheese in it. Se creamy and delish

How do you make cheesy dumplings?

I was listening to the Zoe podcast yesterday and they said that it's almost impossible to not get enough protein in a western diet, at it's in most things, including bread. In fact, most of us are eating at least twice as much protein as we need. So I wouldn't worry too much and bulk out with veg. But I put pearl barley (good for protein) in all of my stews. And mop up the gravy with bread and butter. 😋