Slow cooker beef stew with dumplings – Best slow cooker recipe 2022

Place all the ingredients for this slow cooker beef casserole straight into the bowl. No need to brown the beef in advance – just lightly dust the pieces of braising steak with flour before hand.

This recipe will be meltingly tender after just six hours on high in the slow cooker.

The dumpling are just three ingredients and can be added to the stew during the last hour of cooking. Or we suggest serving this with mashed potatoes – the ultimate in midweek comfort food.

A dollop of onion marmalade, stirred in towards the end, will add the sweetness of caramelised onions with non of the hassle.

Slow cooker beef stew with dumplings

Making a beef and dumpling stew just got a lot easier thanks to the help of a slow cooker. Slow cookers allow you to throw everything into the base, walk away and return to a delicious warming meal, with very little hands-on time or attention.

For hassle free cooking, here are our top tips for this beef stew:

• Placing all the ingredients for this slow cooker beef stew straight into the appliance means that it bypasses the step of browning the beef in advance (although you can brown your beef if you’d like an added boost of flavour), which reduces the washing up considerably.

• The dumplings are just three ingredients and are simply added into the bowl of the slow cooker, atop the casserole, during the last hour of cooking.

• A tbsp of onion marmalade, stirred into the casserole at the end of step 2, will mimic the sweetness of caramelised onions with none of the hassle.

• This casserole doesn’t even need stirring throughout the cooking process, so it can be left alone, allowing you to get on with your day.

In fact, slow cooker’s temperatures drop dramatically when the lid is lifted and they take a long time to reach up to temperature again, so it’s imperative to keep the lid closed throughout the cooking process.

Alternative Dumpling Flavours:

If you want to take the dumplings to the next level, try using the following alternatives;

• Different herbs such as chives, thyme, rosemary, sage or tarragon.

• Stirring through 1/2-1tsp (depending on taste) mustard or horseradish into the dumpling dough.

• Mixing 50g of cheese of your choice through the flour, prior to the water being added, such as gruyére or cheddar.

Ingredients

For the stew

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 onion, roughly chopped

2 medium parsnips, cut into 2.5cm pieces

2 medium carrots, cut into 2.5cm pieces

1 large leek, cut into 1cm slices

3 tbsp. tomato purée

1 .2kg braising steak, cut into 4cm chunks

Plain flour, to dust

200 mlred wine

600 ml beef stock

3 fresh rosemary sprigs

For the dumplings

1 tbsp. dried parsley

60 g suet

125 g self-raising flour

Directions

Put the oil, vegetables and tomato purée into the bowl of your slow cooker. Dry the beef pieces with kitchen paper and dust with the plain flour (tapping off excess). Add to the slow cooker together with the wine, stock, rosemary and some seasoning. Stir to combine.
Cover and cook on high for 5hr or until the beef is tender.
After 5hrs of cooking, make the dumplings. Sift the flour into a large bowl and stir in the suet, parsley and lots of seasoning. Add 100ml cold water and stir to make a soft (and slightly sticky) dough.
Remove the lid and discard the rosemary sprigs. Pinch off walnut-sized pieces of dough, gently roll into a ball and place on top of the stew, spacing apart. Recover and cook for 1hr more. Check the seasoning and serve with mashed potatoes.

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/food/recipes/a537061/slow-cooker-beef-stew-with-dumplings/