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Braising beef cooked low and slow with carrots, mushrooms and pearl barley until it falls apart under a spoon. A deep bowl of soft, savoury stew, made in a slow cooker or a pressure cooker.
Check off ingredients as you go.
Contains celery, gluten. Check the labels on packaged ingredients:
Season the beef with salt and toss it in the flour. Warm the oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat and brown the beef in two batches, 4 to 5 minutes each, turning a piece only when it lifts away cleanly. Move each batch to the slow cooker.
Lower the heat to medium, add the onion to the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato purée and thyme for 1 minute, then pour in about 200 ml of the stock and scrape up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan.
Tip it into the slow cooker with the carrots, celery, mushrooms, barley and the rest of the stock. Cover and cook on low for 7 to 8 hours or on high for 4 to 5 hours, until the beef breaks apart under a spoon and the barley is swollen and tender.
Cooked when: 63°C / 145°F in the thickest part, then left to rest for 3 minutes. A food thermometer is the reliable way to tell.
For a pressure cooker, do the first two steps on the sauté setting, add everything else in the same quantities, seal and cook on high pressure for 35 minutes, then let the pressure release naturally for 15 minutes.
Taste for salt, stir in the parsley and serve in deep bowls.
Brown the beef in two batches. Crowded into one, it releases water faster than the pan can boil it off and stews grey; that brown crust is where a slow-cooked stew gets its depth, because a slow cooker never runs hot enough to make one.
One serving is A deep bowl, a quarter of the stew. You can switch to a smaller portion in the ingredients above; it is three quarters of this, and it contains correspondingly less energy and protein. It is an option, not a goal.
Potatoes instead of pearl barley, 300 g in 3 cm chunks
A more traditional stew; the gravy is thinner without the barley's starch.
Per serving: about 15 kcal less, about the same protein, about the same fat.
Allergens: Barley contains gluten, so this removes it from the stew, though the flour still contains gluten.
Leave out the flour
A thinner gravy; the barley still thickens it a little. Nutrition is not recalculated.
Allergens: With the potato swap, removes gluten. Check the stock label too.
Pork shoulder instead of braising beef
Sweeter and softer; it is tender about an hour sooner on low.
Per serving: about 30 kcal more, about 3 g less protein, about 4 g more fat.
Per standard serving, calculated from the ingredients above. Nutrition changes with substitutions, brands and how much oil stays in the pan.
Braising beef is leaner than it looks once trimmed, so a bowl of this is mostly beef and vegetables, with the barley adding fibre and body.
| Energy | 385 kcal |
|---|---|
| Protein | 42 g |
| Fat | 10 g |
| of which saturates | 3 g |
| Carbohydrate | 35 g |
| of which sugars | 8 g |
| Fibre | 7 g |
| Sodium | 600 mg |
Each ingredient’s weight is multiplied by its USDA FoodData Central values per 100 g. The whole recipe is added up and divided by 4. Raw weights are used for meat, fish and vegetables; beans and lentils are drained weights. All of the oil is counted as eaten. Added salt is not included; sodium from stock, bread, cheese and tinned food is.
| Ingredient | Weight used | Source | Energy | Protein |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| braising beef | 600 g | FDC 171206Beef, chuck for stew, separable lean and fat, all grades, rawCalculated with FoodData Central's chuck for stew record, lean and fat as sold. | 768 kcal | 130.5 g |
| plain flour | 15 g | FDC 169761Wheat flour, white, all-purpose, unenriched | 55 kcal | 1.5 g |
| olive oil | 9 g | FDC 171413Oil, olive, salad or cooking | 80 kcal | 0.0 g |
| onion | 150 g | FDC 170000Onions, raw | 60 kcal | 1.7 g |
| tomato purée | 30 g | FDC 170459Tomato products, canned, paste, without salt added (Includes foods for USDA's Food Distribution Program) | 25 kcal | 1.3 g |
| dried thyme | 1 tsp | Not calculatedHalf a teaspoon of dried thyme weighs well under a gram, which is under 2 kcal at the energy density of any dried herb. | · | · |
| beef stock | 810 g | FDC 172883Soup, stock, beef, home-preparedCalculated with FoodData Central's home-prepared beef stock. Bought stock and stock cubes carry more salt. | 105 kcal | 16.0 g |
| carrot | 250 g | FDC 170393Carrots, raw | 103 kcal | 2.3 g |
| celery | 100 g | FDC 169988Celery, raw | 14 kcal | 0.7 g |
| mushrooms | 200 g | FDC 169251Mushrooms, white, raw | 44 kcal | 6.2 g |
| pearl barley | 80 g | FDC 170284Barley, pearled, raw | 282 kcal | 7.9 g |
| parsley | 10 g | FDC 170416Parsley, fresh | 4 kcal | 0.3 g |
| Whole recipe | Divided by 4 | 1539 kcal | 168.4 g |
Per serving the energy is rounded to the nearest 5 kcal, grams to the nearest whole gram and sodium to the nearest 10 mg. Ingredients marked “Not calculated” are excluded and could add at most 2 kcal to the whole recipe. Calculation method 1.0, September 2026. How the calculation works.
Checked against US Food and Drug Administration, Refrigerator and Freezer Storage Chart, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Leftovers and Food Safety, FoodSafety.gov, Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures and FoodSafety.gov, Cold Food Storage Chart. UK guidance from the Food Standards Agency is shorter, at two days for most leftovers.
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About 1 hr 5 min · 415 kcal · 41 g protein per serving
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About 55 min · 545 kcal · 47 g protein per serving