To turn a beef stew into beef and vegtable stew

[IceniMist]

Because 700g of meat doesn't look enough for four adults but knowing full well my 20 & 18 year old DSSs will only pick out the meat because they don't eat vegtables and complain it wasn't enough food.

Can you make a stew without vegetables? That's just beef and gravy isn't it?

750 grams of meat is plenty for four adults. They are adults so its up to them whether they eat the meal on offer. Personally I'd make the stew in my usual way then I'd serve it (no letting them pick out all the meat and leave you with the veggies) along with the crusty bread.

If they don't like the food on offer they can always buy and prepare a meal for the family.

It depends on the stew

Delia smiths beef in beer is just beef and onions in beer
Beef bourguignon however has leeks , carrots and onions in it
Chilli is beef, kidney beans, onions, peppers and tomatoes

100g is too little meat for an adult portion?! Says who?? I use 500g for a stew for me, DH and DD and that will do us 2 meals. We also fill it with potatoes, carrots, butternut squash, parsnips, leeks etc etc. It's plenty.

As well as onions how about using green lentils? you get get them tinned and they just add a bit of bulk and protein, unlikely to get spotted by a veg refused as they do breakdown.

I'd make the stew and serve the vegetables on the side. If they're going to pick stuff out it's just rude. If they want to just eat meat and bread it doesn't sound as though you can stop them.

A quarter of 700 g beef is more than twice the recommended daily consumption of red meat.

Stew should have vegetables in it, or served on the side.

Throw in butternust squash. It will dissolve and they won't know but it will bulk out the sauce and be delicious.

But then again stew needs veg and adults need to not act like toddlers!

I assume they don't get pudding if they don't eat their greens?

beef stew has potatoes and veg in it.

yanbu
next sunday give them a tenner (if you are feeling generous) and tell them to cook for the family.

Barley would bulk it up - would they eat that?

If they're that fussy I'd cook it with the veg in then take out the meat at the end, blend the rest into the gravy & push it through a sieve, then put back the lumps of meat a bit like hiding veg in toddler food

I grate carrot and courgette into mince and blend tinned tomatoes! Then I add in lumpy veg so DD thinks that is normal. I need to get a life don't I?

You can't call it stew if there are no veg. Otherwise it is called beef soup.

Tom Kerridge did a fantastic-looking beef and vegetable stew with dumplings on Friday evening, I could almost smell it, it looked so good. I am itching to try it, but most of it would go into the freezer as there is only me to eat it

ROFL at 100g of meat not being enough for an adult portion of stew. I tend to batch cook stew and make 6 meals worth at a time (for me, DH, DS and DD). Use about 1kg of beef, 1.5kg of carrots, swede or two, big pile of leeks and onions, bulked out with either pearl barley or dumplings. So each meal (between 4 of us) has about 160g of meat. It's lush, and still plenty meaty enough (I do make my own beef stock though).

To me, the meat in stew is really to add flavour rather than being the main event IYSWIM.

100G of raw meat isn't anywhere near enough meat for an adult's portion

Have to say, I agree.

We had pork loin steaks today. There were 4 in a pack and the pack was 480g, so 120g ish per steak.

My 6 year old ate one himself, my 4 year old had just under one. Dh and I had two each and it wasn't overly excessive (well didn't seem so to me).

And we are taller and broader than 70 years ago!

There's a reason people are fatter broader than 70 years ago .... it's called overeating

"Red meat – such as beef, lamb and pork – can form part of a healthy diet. But eating a lot of red and processed meat probably increases your risk of bowel (colorectal) cancer.

That’s why the Department of Health advises people who eat more than 90 grams (cooked weight) of red and processed meat a day to cut down to 70 grams."

www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/red-meat.aspx

Dumplings?

Could you add a pastry to make like a steak pie ?

I see beef has taken over from the magical MN chicken which can feed a family of four for three weeks and still have leftovers...

Surely An adult sized portion of beef for us is about 300gms, anything else just isn't worth it?.. 100gms for an adult portion? I've seen more meat on a butchers pencil!

As for 18 & 20 yr olds not eating veg, if they have an issue with it they can just pick it out, it's no big deal... Some harsh comments about tonight.

Green giant that probably is an excessive portion of meat though - a portion of meat should be no bigger than the palm of your hand, or about the size of a deck of cards.

There's a couple of good guides to portion sizes here and this one is a link to a pdf download, but you can also find it by searching on the leedsletschange.co.uk website

The op about rationing was perfectly valid - Brits were the healthiest they've ever been as a nation when rationing was in place.

I made a shepherd's pie/cottage pie this weekend with 500g mince for four servings. There was plenty of meat in it.

Our meat portions are always bigger than the size of your hand.

Especially the dc...their hands are tiny. I'd say ds1 probably eats about 3 of his palms in meat tbh.

X-post with peggy there. Yes, if we were having steak or something, then the portion size would probably be bigger, but then I would have less meat later in the week. But generally I tend to aim for half the plate being veg, just over a quarter being starchy thing and under a quarter meat. With something like stew, there'd be less meat, with steak there'd be more, but I wouldn't eat steak every day.

And yes, I have magical chickens too...would aim to get 4 meals out of the 1.6kg roast chicken we had tonight (roast, stirfry, risotto and either wraps or soup with the scraps).

Mind you, I had a colon cancer scare last year which really made me look at my diet and how much meat I ate, and have been actively trying to increase the veg content and reduce the meat content of meals (which has been hard, as there were loads of veg I didn't like...turns out, yep, didn't like them when I was 8, do like them now).