This meal took about an hour to make. A pretty good deal, I think. Usually it takes me 5-6 hours to make this stew in the oven, or even longer in a crockpot.
This recipe is from the Mirro manual that came with my pressure cooker. It's for a 6-8 quart cooker. Another note: usually I use a chuck roast for my stew. The meat is more tender and, a lot of times, cheaper. But since I was using the pressure cooker and the stew meat was on sale, I used that instead. I found the meat to be just as tender as my usual stew.
3# stew meat
2 Tbsp shortening
2 Tbsp kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika-I used half-sharp
1 3/4 cups water
2 medium onions, chopped
7-8 carrots, cut in half
8 potatoes, peeled and cut in half or quarters
Brown the beef in the shortening in small batches. Remove from pot and sprinkle with salt, pepper and paprika (I ended up using more than the suggested amounts of the spices).
Place the rack in the bottom of the cooker and return the meat to it. Cover and bring to pressure at 10 lbs. Once pressure is reached, cook for 10 minutes. Cool by turning the heat off for 5 minutes, then run under cool water to release the pressure.
Add the veggies. Cover and bring back to 10 lbs pressure and cook for 10 minutes.
Cool instantly by removing from heat and running under cool water.
Remove the stew to a bowl and make gravy with the drippings. Pour the gravy over the stew and toss to coat. Serves 8-10
GRAVY
Pour drippings into a measuring cup. For each cup of drippings, you'll need a thickener made of 2 Tablespoons flour and 1/4 cup of cool water. This stew made a little over 3 cups of gravy, so my thickener was 3/4 cups cool water and 1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons flour.
Bring the drippings back to a simmer, stir in the thickener and cook, stirring constantly until smooth and there is no flour taste.
