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Beef Stew with Peas
3 lbs. soup meat 3 qts. cold water 1 large onion 1 tablespoon salt 1 saltspoon pepper 1 slice carrot 1/2 slice turnip 2 potatoes 1 pint split peas Choose the meat from the under part of the round, face of the rump, aitch-bone or the remainder of roast beef. Remove all the slivers of bone, trim and wipe the meat, cut it into 1 inch cubes, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sear it in some of the fat, dredge with Gold Medal flour and brown, add water and cook it four hours. When it begins to boil, remove the scum and fat. Cook the peas in another kettle in water to cover, and as the water boils away replenish with water from the meat. Keep the meat covered with water and when half done add the vegetables, all cut fine, and the seasoning. When ready, serve the meat by itself. Rub the peas through a puree strainer and, after removing the fat from the meat liquor, add the peas to the latter. Season to taste and serve very hot.
This is really two dishes from one pot: a plain boiled beef to serve on its own, and a split pea soup built on the strained cooking liquor. Read it through before starting so the two kettles run in parallel.
- The cuts namedUnder part of the round, face of the rump and aitch-bone are all lean, hard-working cuts from the hindquarter. Any beef labelled stewing beef, chuck or bottom round works; the aitch-bone (the rump end of the hip) is rarely sold under that name now.
- A saltspoonRoughly a quarter teaspoon. The tablespoon of salt is for 3 quarts of water and is reasonable, but salt the finished soup at the end rather than the start, since it reduces.
- Split peas, and no soakingA pint of dried split peas is about 14 oz. They need no soaking and will collapse in 60 to 90 minutes, well before the beef is done, so start them partway through rather than at the beginning.
- Four hours is longCubed beef at a bare simmer is tender in about two hours. Four hours will hold if the pot never boils hard, but cubes cooked that long give up most of their flavour to the broth, which is precisely the point here.
- Keep it below a boilThe instruction to skim as it begins to boil, then keep it covered with water, is the hinge. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquor and clouds it; you want lazy bubbles and a clean surface you can skim.
- Replenishing the peas with meat liquorThis transfers the beef flavour into the peas without diluting either pot. Ladle from the meat kettle, not the tap, each time the pea water drops.
- Straining the peasA food mill or a coarse sieve does the work of the puree strainer. Blending is faster but gives a smoother, more uniform texture than the original intends; either way, press out and discard the skins if you want it silky.
- DegreasingChill the strained liquor briefly and the fat lifts off in a sheet. Save a spoonful of the beef fat for searing the next batch.
- YieldThree pounds of meat and 3 quarts of water feed six to eight, giving a plate of boiled beef with vegetables and a generous bowl of soup each.
Gold Medal, the Washburn-Crosby flour brand, published promotional cook books that made ready use of flour for a step that is otherwise optional in a wet stew. The dish itself is older than the pamphlet: cooking a cheap hindquarter cut in a great deal of water and then serving the meat and the broth as separate courses is the classic pot-au-feu economy, often said to have been a familiar habit in American and English households in the nineteenth century. Split peas turn up in books of this kind because they were shelf-stable, cheap and thickened without cream, and pea soup finished with beef liquor is a plausible second use for a boiling piece.