Keto Beef Stew

This Keto Beef Stew recipe is easy to make and wonderful to eat.  And each serving has just 4g net carbs.

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• Bonjour! 👋
• Instant Pots can do it all. 💪
• But Keto stew, let's discuss. 😊
• Ingredients 🥘
• Instructions 💬
• Tips and Tricks 🔪
• So there you have it 👩‍🍳
• 📋 Recipe

Bonjour! 👋

Today I'm going to share a recipe for Keto Beef Stew, also known as Beef Bourguignon. To find a good recipe, I went straight to the source, the Queen Julia Child.  She's got a wonderful recipe for this classic French stew in her cookbook, The Art of French Cooking.  It was actually the very first recipe she ever made on tv.

The rest, as they say, was history. 📺

There was only one problem with the recipe though. ⌛

It took 3-4 hours to braise in the oven!  But no matter, we live in a world with Instant Pots, so we only need to pressure cook it for half an hour. Yep, since Julia's time, we have discovered the Polio vaccine and invented the Instant Pot. I'd be hard-pressed to pick between the two.

Instant Pots can do it all. 💪

It is a pressure cooker, slow cooker, broiler, dehydrator, sous vide, steamer, and warmer. It can hard boil eggs, roast chickens, and sauté vegetables. The Instant Pot can even bake cakes! The only thing it can't do is wash the dishes for you afterward.

It is a modern marvel. 🤩 

But Keto stew, let's discuss. 😊

Regular beef stew usually uses white flour or cornstarch as a thickening agent, so it isn't very Ketogenic. And it often includes potatoes, which are a low carb no-no. But we can make this soup Keto-friendly without too much wrangling.

The secret to thickening Keto soups is Xanthan Gum. You can use a tiny amount of this white powder to thicken any liquid that you like. And we can go ahead and leave out the potatoes in this Keto beef stew. The onions and mushrooms are doing all of the heavy lifting in this dish anyway.

So no root veggies required. 🥕

Ingredients 🥘

• bacon, cut into ½ inch lardons
• beef stew meat
• light olive oil
• onions, diced
• mushrooms, quartered
• garlic, minced
•  Xanthan Gum
• Burgandy or similar red wine
• beef broth
• tomato paste
• dried thyme
• bay leaf
• salt & pepper

Instructions 💬

1. Preheat Instant Pot on Sauté setting until the display reads HOT.
2. Add the lardons to the pot and cook until crisp, 5 minutes.
3. Remove the bacon and put it on paper towels to drain.  Remove all but 1 tablespoon of the bacon grease in the pot.  Reserve the rest of the bacon grease.
4. Add the beef to the pot in three batches, making sure not to crowd the pan.  Using a spatula and tongs, brown the beef on all sides, 4-5 minutes.  If the pan gets too dry, add more bacon grease.  Remove beef to a large bowl.
5. Heat one tablespoon olive oil in the pot.  Add onions and cook until softened, 2 minutes.
6. Add mushrooms and cook until softened, 5 minutes.
7. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute more.
8. Remove vegetables from the pot and add to the bowl of beef.
9. Heat one teaspoon olive oil in the pan and add in Xanthan Gum.  Stir to dissolve.
10. Add wine to the pan and use a spatula to scrape up the browned bits.  Cook until wine thickens, 1 minute.
11. Add beef broth, tomato paste, thyme, and bay leaf to the pan and stir until thickened, 1-3 minutes more.
12. Add beef, vegetables, and bacon back into the pot.
13. Put the lid on the Instant Pot and pressure cook on the Meat/Stew setting for 30 minutes.  Use quick-release valve to release the steam.
14. Open the lid and remove the bay leaf.  Taste for saltiness and add salt and pepper as desired.

Tips and Tricks 🔪

Here are some tips, tricks, and whimsical musings that I learned from watching Julia Child's show about Beef Bourguignon. You must imagine these quotes in Julia's rich and cultured voice.

• "Bourguignon means Burgandy, where the dish is from.  Burgandy is good, but any kind of good red wine will do."
• "Before you sauté anything, you want to make sure that you have it good and dry...If you don't dry the meat, you can't brown it because it's as though it were steaming.  There's water on the bottom of the meat and it just steams rather than browns."
• "You have to be a little bit patient, if you want to have success."
• "I always find a towel awfully useful to have hung around me."
• "Unless you are on one of those 'fat-free diets' you are going to want to leave a little bit in for flavor."
• "You don't want to put pepper in until the end of the sauce, because pepper can be a little bit bitter."
• "The sauce needs to be thick enough to 'enrobe' the beef."
• "When it's cool, you can cover it and refrigerate it.  Be sure never to cover anything while it's still hot, because it may sour."
• "It's fun to make and wonderful to eat."

So there you have it 👩‍🍳

Straight from the grandmother of French cookery herself. Now you've got a go-to recipe for Keto Beef Stew with only 4g net carbs per serving. Très bon!  Ok, I'm going to leave you with one last bit of advice from Julia:

"Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?" 😉

Ok, chow for now!

(But let's keep in touch.)

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📋 Recipe

If you liked this low carb stew recipe, then you might like my recipes for Beef Vegetable Soup, New England Clam Chowder or Keto Chicken, Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo.