Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragú or What to do with Cheap Beef Cubes

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Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragú

Big Fat Healthy Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragú is a mouthful. It’s almost as rich as a beef bourguinon without the fuss and whole bottle of good red wine. This is more of Wednesday night dinner with a Sunday feel.

Beef Cubes are cheap, and yes it hurts me to talk about cheap beef, because I’m not talking unhealthy and I don’t want you to misunderstand. This is going to taste good from your mouth to your gut to your soul.

I do want you to get out the slow cooker (honestly something I don’t do enough of), and turn cheap beef into a rich, provencal, shredded beef full of flavor and ready to be eaten over rice, over pasta, over polenta, over grits, over zoodles, over potatoes or simply in a bowl.

The leftovers can be placed into crepes, omelettes, frittatas, tortillas, dinner rolls, gnocchi, or simply served in a bowl. Here I used a store-bought gnocchi and left-over shredded beef ragú. This is Italian meat and potatoes and kids love it!

Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragú Process

You can play around with this recipe for this ragú, sort of. You can’t believe some of the emails I get where people change the recipe to nearly unrecognizable and then tell me how it didn’t taste as good as they anticipated. So allow me to guide you on what you can and cannot do to this recipe.

• The main ingredients are onion, carrots, celery, crushed tomatoes, beef, cream, wine.
• Beef cubes can be replaced with pork cubes or veal cubes.
• Crushed tomatoes can be replaced with a can of Italian peeled tomatoes (not diced tomatoes).
• Celery can be replaced by apples, fresh fennel or nothing. NO celery salt!
• Carrots can be replaced by 1/2 cup cubed sweet potatoes.
• White wine can be replaced by red wine.
• Add in some milk, cream or skip this. Don’t add milk substitutes like almond milk or coconut milk. Just leave it out.

Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragú is Easy and Affordable.

This should now be a very easy dinner. You will have to prep for about ten minutes. How easy is that? You will need to chop some onions, celery, carrots and brown your beef. If you skip browning the beef cubes, they will be gray and you will miss the flavor browning meat makes happen.

Beef cubes are the least expensive beef on the market and this dish can turn into several leftover meals. This is one way to eat , big fat healthy food without a lot of fuss and on a budget.

Remember beef cubes the next time you’re in the grocery store. They are not just for beef soup or beef stew, but I have those recipes for you too.

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Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragú or What to do with Cheap Beef Cubes

Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragú, fork tender and versatile, can be served on pasta, rice, gnocchi, polenta or by itself.

Prep Time20 mins

Cook Time6 hrs

Total Time6 hrs 20 mins

Course: Entree

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: 8

Author: Angela Roberts

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/2 pounds beef cubes
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 carrots small dice
• 2 celery sticks small dice
• 1 large onion small dice
• 1 large can tomato crushed tomatoes
• 1/4 cup cream (optional
• 2 cups dry white wine can use red wine
• salt pepper
• fresh herbs for garnish such as flat Italian parsley

Instructions

• Warm olive oil on medium heat.
• Remove any excess fat or gristle from beef cubes.
• Generously season beef cubes with salt and pepper.
• Brown beef cubes on all sides. Remove.
• Add to same pan onions, carrots, celery, and cook for about two minutes.
• Add garlic cloves.
• Add tomatoes, followed by cream.
• Once cream is incorporated, add wine.
• Transfer to your slow cooker for 6 hours on high, 12 hours on low.
• If you are cooking on high, add 1 cup water.

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