Crock Pot Beef And Cabbage Stew With Potatoes

When it finally turns cold enough for stew, this is the first thing I make. Six things go in the pot, and not one of them needs peeling or browning. Stew meat, half a head of cabbage, a bag of frozen cubed potatoes, a can of petite diced tomatoes, beef broth, and a packet of beefy onion soup mix. Ten minutes of work and the lid goes on.

Eight hours later, the beef pulls apart with a fork, and the cabbage has cooked all the way down. The potatoes are already in there, so there’s nothing else to make. It feeds six to eight.

 

Prep Time	Cook Time	Servings	Prep Level
10 minutes	8 hours	6-8	Beginner +

Julie’s Tip: Don’t Add More Liquid, No Matter How It Looks

Your pot is going to be very full when you start. Half a head of cabbage takes up more room than you’d think, and it’ll be sitting up above the liquid line looking wrong.

So it’s ok to leave it alone. The cabbage, the frozen potatoes, and the meat all give up liquid as they cook, and the cabbage shrinks way down while it does. Everything does not need to be covered when you put the lid on. If you add more broth trying to fix it, you’ll be wiping stew off your counter.

How To Make Crock Pot Beef And Cabbage Stew

Cut the cabbage into rough ribbons, about a finger’s width. They don’t need to be neat. Add it to the bottom of the slow cooker. Next, add the stew meat. I like to buy the stew meat already cut, so that is one less thing to do. Beef tips will also work for this dish.

Next, add the potatoes to the slow cooker. Pour the can of diced tomatoes, juice and all, into the pot. Sprinkle the beefy onion soup mix on top and pour in the beef broth. Give everything a little bit of a stir.

Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, until the beef pulls apart easily with a fork and the cabbage has cooked down and gone soft.

Why There’s No Peeling and No Browning

There are two pounds of frozen cubed potatoes, so instead of peeling my own, I get the frozen ones, and that’s purely to save time. Peeling and cubing potatoes is the longest job in any stew, and somebody already did it for me.

Same thinking on the meat. I don’t brown the stew meat first. The whole point of a crock pot supper at my house is dump-and-go, and if I’m going to dirty a skillet, I might as well make the stew on the stove and be done with it.

Storage And Reheating

If you have leftovers, let them cool, then keep them in an airtight container in the refrigerator for three or four days.

To reheat, add them to a pot over medium-low heat and stir every few minutes. In the microwave, cover the bowl and heat in 1-minute intervals, stirring in between.

I wouldn’t freeze this one. The potatoes went in frozen to begin with, and putting them through a second round in the freezer turns them grainy and soft in a way that doesn’t come back when you reheat. Eat it up over a few days instead. It’s better the second day anyway.