Before last week I couldn’t have written a post like this one. Not because frozen beef stew should be avoided, but because I hadn’t tried it.
I like beef stew. I have two methods for making it: from-scratch and beef-tips-assisted. For the latter, I purchase a carton of prepared beef tips and gravy and add fresh potatoes and other vegetables. From scratch means starting with raw beef stew meat and going from there. Both methods require planning and work with the from-scratch stew taking several hours to make.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to satisfy a craving for beef stew with almost no work? Canned beef stew has been around forever and is available everywhere. But it doesn’t do the job. Heating up a can of Dinty More reminds me of my backpacking days. It’s cheap and filling, but it tastes like, well, canned stew. Frozen beef stew, it seems, would taste a lot better.
I made a few unorganized efforts in the past to find frozen beef stew with no success. There’s frozen everything else: pizza, meat pies, rice bowls, lasagna, enchiladas—just about any entree you can name. So why not frozen beef stew?
This time I put the question to Chat GPT and got two types of responses. First it listed several reasons why there isn’t a lot of frozen beef stew for sale (shelf space, reheating issues, soggy potatoes). But it also told me I wasn’t looking hard enough (my words not Chat GPT’s) because the product is in some grocery stores.
Backed by Chat GPT’s assurance, I carefully checked the frozen food section at the QFC in Belfair and found two varieties of beef stew. I tried one of them—Yellowstone Bunkhouse Braised Beef Stew (see screen capture)—before writing this post. The cost was about twice that of canned stew but competitive with other frozen dinners.
In addition to being a popular TV show starring the Dutton family, Yellowstone sells a broad line of cowboy cuisine, both frozen and canned.
My verdict for a frozen entree: very good (4 of 5 stars). At 10.75 oz. the portion size is adequate. There’s plenty of beef and the vegetables are good. It doesn’t taste quite like fresh beef stew, but it’s close. That’s in line with what several reviewers said in You Tube videos. One strange quirk: the instructions call for heating it for 37 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees. Why such an odd number? Either I have a hot oven or 37 minutes is too long. I let the stew cool for several minutes before serving it.
One other tip: For best results serve beef stew with fresh bread during cold weather. There’s plenty of the latter coming up this winter.
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