Ben's Biohacked, Braised & Boundless Beef Stew

Hey, I'm Ben Greenfield. I have written a cookbook, and while I don't profess to be a Michelin star chef, I have to say I've got some pretty darn interesting recipes in that cookbook. I'm going to show you a recipe that's not in the cookbook, so you can consider this to be a little bit of a bonus. But incorporates a lot of the cool biohacks superfood weird ingredients that I like to combine with some of the more natural ancestral ingredients. So I call this recipe Ben's Boundless Braised Beef.

Stew. Whatever you want to call it, it actually doesn't have the greatest title, but regardless, it tastes really fantastic. If you had, like, the French recipe Beef Borgnon before, this is kind of like my own twist on that. Use a Dutch oven, a grill or an oven. Some wonderful chuck roast you can see here that I have from Bel Campo Meats, and then some other choice ingredients that I'll show you along the way. So we are gonna get started. First thing is I got a Dutch oven here. Dutch oven is amazing. If you don't own one, I highly recommend you invest in one. I'm going to put the heat on this Dutch oven to about medium high. And the first thing I want in this Dutch oven is a nice layer of fat and oil. So what I have here is some pastured bacon from bel campo, about 10 strips of bacon, and I'm going to drop my bacon into the Dutch pot and then the other ingredient that's really going to enhance the flavor of the chuck roast as we begin to cook it up and brown it and get it evenly browned for the next step in the process is, of course, the wonderful French ingredient butter. Use good butter. This is Kerrygold Irish butter. Good butter will really put your recipe over the top. So don't skimp on your butter. And what we're going to do is put around 4 tablespoons or so of butter in here along with the bacon. So what we're creating is essentially a nice fatty layer at the bottom of that Dutch pot that the meat is going to be basically browning in as we go. Now, as that browns, you know, if you're into time hacking like I am, there's all sorts of things that you can do to begin to prepare the other parts of this recipe. So I have a Traeger grill that I'm going to be cooking this recipe in, and I've got it set and warming up right now at 350 degrees. You could also use an oven the reason I like the Traeger is it'll give me a nice even cook without a lot of hot spots as I give it a cook. This particular recipe I'm not going to be smoking, but you could theoretically smoke a little bit of the meat before you cooked it if you wanted to, if you're using something like a Traeger. So I'm going to let the bacon and the butter go for around five minutes or so. And while that's going, let me show you what else I have here. So this is a sauce that I've created and this is the money because this sauce is going to be used to braise this meat as it cooks. So what I have in this sauce is I've got some dry farm organic wine. Remember to use good wine. Most wine in the US has about 70 plus different pesticides and herbicides in it and it's shocking what they include in wine these days. You want a nice natural wine. I like the dry farm variety for a good organic biodynamic wine. I'm going to set that to the side for now. I also have, and I'll include along with this video the exact volumetric measurements for each of these liquids. But I've got apple cider vinegar. This is also going to help to break down some of the fibers in that meat. Again, I like to go for a good apple cider vinegar. One of my favorites here is Braggs. Give this a quick stir and then I'll keep showing you what I have in this sauce. Okay, the next ingredient in the sauce is I've got some coconut aminos much, much better than soy sauce. If you cook with soy sauce and you want to get rid of some of the potential for GMO soy, for a lot of excess unopposed sodium chloride, a lot of issues, coconut aminos are the way to go. So I've got coconut aminos in my sauce along with the wine and the apple cider vinegar. One of my secret sauces. My favorite cooking ingredients of late, my organic Joey's Hot Sauce, one of my favorite hot sauces. I've got about 2 tablespoons of hot sauce in there just for a little bit of an extra kick. That one's optional for you, but man, it'll really, really amplify the flavor of your sauce. And then you can either use raw honey or organic maple syrup for your sweetener so that meat caramelizes quite nicely. So I've just got shady Maple Farms, 100% Pure Organization Organic maple syrup in there in the sauce as well. And Then finally, kettle and fire bone broth. One carton of organic kettle and fire bone broth. And that's everything in my sauce. Now, if you wind up making your sauce and you put your meat into your pot and you find that you don't have enough sauce, it's okay to mix and match a little bit, add a little bit of extra broth, add a little bit extra wine. You just want to make sure that meat's covered by the time it gets into the broth. Now, I'm using about 5 pounds of chuck roast right now. This is also from Bel Campo grass fed grass finished chuck roast. If you have a stew meat or a chuck roast, those are the type of cuts that are perfect for this recipe because they're not that great for steak, they're not that great for a saute. But man, once they sit in that Dutch pot for a couple of hours and all these sauce ingredients kind of break down the fibers in that meat, it's really going to amplify the flavor and make the meat way more tender. Okay? So if you take a look at this bacon and butter, you can see it's kind of melted down here. It's smelling just amazing. Those French folks knew what they were up to when they used so much butter in their cooking. And the bacon fat is going to really amplify the flavor even more. Now, if you're like me and you like to save time, you can get ready to put the meat in and your sauce shortly afterwards over the bacon. Now, if you're a true French chef, you could remove the bacon, brown the meat, then put the bacon and the butter back in. But I mean, face it, you don't have hours and hours to make dinner. So we're just going to go with the meat going over the bacon and the butter. So I'm going to keep this on medium high. Going to take my chuck roast here, and the chuck roast is going to go in with the bacon and the butter. And I like to put it in all at once, again to save time. If I were a true fancy French chef, I'd like evenly brown it on all sides. But again, part of my book is about recipes that are easy and simple to make. But that's a tip for you if you want to. For this recipe, you can put the meat in phases so that you evenly brown it, or you can brown it in a separate pot. I'm one of those guys who just likes to dump it all in, brown it at once. It still tastes great. And I haven't gotten Any complaints about this particular recipe? So I'm just rolling with it. So as this meat is browning, I'm going to show you a couple of the things that I've prepared here. So first of all, I've got some chopped onions and some minced garlic. After I've browned that meat for about three or four minutes, I'm going to put the onions and the garlic in along with the meat, my other vegetables. For this particular recipe, I'm going to cook and caramelize separately. Now, some people actually like to put all the vegetables, all the sauce into the Dutch pot, set it, forget it, and walk away. The reason I like to do the vegetables separately is because I like my vegetables to be nice and caramelized. And I'll show you how I'm going to do that shortly rather than be thrown in with the meat, and I'll cook that once. But if you want to save a little bit of time and you could actually do the meat in the Dutch pot along with the vegetables. So as I'm browning this meat, I can begin to slowly add my onions and my garlic for a little added flavor. There's no need to saute or to cook your onions and your garlic beforehand. However, again, if you want to unlock a little bit more flavor, get a little bit more of the bioactive health components component of garlic called allicin, out of the garlic, you can saute it in a separate pan. Again, I'm all about saving time when I cook, so I'm throwing it all in there at once. So now I've got my butter, my bacon, my onions, my garlic, and my meat. Now, if you are super paleo, gluten free, low carb, this next step I'm going to show you is not 100% necessary. However, I really, really like to coat this meat with some secret sauces as it goes. All right, so what are my secret sauces, you may ask? So first I've got Himalayan Tartery buckwheat from Angelica Mills. Himalayan tartery Buckwheat was originally found in China. In a small region of China where people were living for a disproportionately long period of time. They consume this buckwheat as a staple in their diet. Turns out it's incredibly high in antioxidants, naturally low in gluten, and one of the most nutrient rich forms of flour that grows in the entire world. I can't find it many places, but in Upper State New York, there's this farm called Angelica Mills. They have Himalayan tartary Buckwheat. I actually include it in a few recipes in Boundless, just because I'm into finding these fringe foods that just really amplify the nutrient density and the flavor, whatever you're cooking with. So with the flour, I like to eyeball it. It's going to come out to around about 3/4 cup or so. But what you want to do is put enough flour in to where this meat just gets a nice little coat on it. So what I like to do, my rule is I coat the top layer of the meat. And as long as the top layer of the meat is pretty coated, once I stir it in, that means my flour is going to kind of get into the rest of the meat. Okay, so that's pretty good right there. And the nice thing is that as the stew goes, this is going to serve as a nice thickener for the stew. So it's got some really nice mouth feel because you don't want a thin, runny stew. You want a stew that's like thick on that spoon. Otherwise we call it soup. Okay, so I'm going to stir in this flour until I really can't see any dry ingredients remaining. And then I'm going to put my next secret sauce in, which is chaga extract. Now, I've got four packets of four Sigmatic Chaga here, also very rich in antioxidants. And this again is an optional step. But I've discovered that cooking with medicinal mushrooms actually amplifies both the flavor and also the nutrient density and the health of whatever I'm cooking. So I like to put some medicinal mushrooms in. One of my favorites to cook with is chaga. Again, because anytime you're cooking with ingredients like rosemary, thyme, antioxidant rich mushrooms, even red wine, you're going to really stave off any of the free radicals and the oxidants that can form when you're exposing meat to high temperatures. So you know, in the same way that if you're grilling meat, using something like a few sprigs of rosemary can really help to offset any carcinogens that might form when you're cooking the meat, you can use chaga kind of similarly. Okay, now before I add that wonderful sauce that I've made with the wine and the apple cider vinegar and everything else, because it's starting to get a little dry on the bottom as I'm stirring. So I'm feeling that it's almost ready for that sauce. The last thing I'm going to put in here, last few things I'm Going to put in here is I've got my organifi red juice. I use this for years as just like an antioxidant rich juice. I'd use it before races, before workouts. And I figured out one day it actually works for wonderfully as, like a meat rub. It caramelizes on the outside of the meat. So this is another kind of secret sauce. Now, I'm going to use around a cup or so. A lot of people like to measure with scoops. I'm an eyeballer. If you want to follow the exact recipe, you're going to be going with about a cup of this stuff. But again, same technique as I use with the flour. I just kind of coat the top layer of the meat. And you would be surprised at the wonderful flavor that this red juice gives when you cook meat with it. And again, it's adding even more antioxidants. Now, as I'm stirring this, I can feel that it's getting a little bit dry down there towards the bottom. Starting to stick to the bottom of the Dutch pot a little bit, despite the bacon and the butter down there, which is a clear sign to me that we are almost ready for the sauce. We're almost ready for the sauce, which is one of the last steps. But before we put that sauce in, a couple of last things. I use a really good salt. I like this kalima salt from the Mexican coast. And again, you don't need a lot of spices in this. I mean, you could use onion powder and garlic and paprika and cayenne. Anything else. But I just like a little salt and pepper in this because I'm getting a lot of flavor from the vegetables and the oat things. I already showed you. I eyeball the salt. The salt and pepper is to taste. I'm a salt fiend, so I like a decent dose of salt. I'm also going to do a few grinds of a nice black peppercorn here. And again, again, I kind of coat the top, and then I'll stir it in. Okay, so we got our pepper, we got our salt, and we're going to leave these out because we'll also use the pepper and the salt on the vegetables as well. Stir this in, and then we are almost ready for our sauce. And then once I get this sauce in here, I simply stir that in. This thing's going to go straight onto the Traeger. Okay, stir my salt and pepper in. That meat's getting nice and browned along bacon and the onions. So time for my sauce. Okay, here's that wonderful sauce I was telling you that I made. We're gonna drizzle this in. And again, I would like for this meat to be mostly covered when I put that sauce in. Looks like I measured just about perfectly, because you can see that that meat is just nearly submerged in the sauce. You use too much sauce, and you're gonna get again, like, too thick of a stew. You want the meat just almost barely covered with the sauce. You can see that's about perfect right there. Okay, so I'm going to give it a few more stirs, make sure I got nothing stuck to the bottom, get any ingredients that have fallen off the edges. You don't want to waste any of your goodness. And stir all this in, give it a few scrapes on the bottom to make sure nothing's really stuck to the bottom in there. And double check to make sure we've got all of our ingredients into the stew. And we do. So next what's going to happen is I'm going to flip off my heat on the burner, and momentarily, we're going to bring this guy out to the Traeger grill and get it going at 350 on the Traeger grill, because that thing's just about warmed up. But in the meantime, as you know, you've chopped up some nice sweet potatoes, carrots, and onions, and. And we also have some parsnips in here, and just a wonderful array of vegetables, and you can pick and choose. You could do broccoli and cauliflower and things like that if you want to. But I like root vegetables and onions for this particular recipe because it's a nice, hearty stew. So what I'm going to do is just transfer this straight into my.

Baking pan here, mix this all around. Now, these vegetables are going to take about a half hour to cook, whereas my roast, I'm gonna leave that on for two and a half hours. So what I like to do is, when that roast is when that stew is at about two hours, then I'll just pop my vegetables on. So what I'm gonna do is prep these, put them in the fridge, and then as soon as that stew is about a half hour to 40 minutes out from being ready, that is when I can basically pop my vegetables in along with it, and that will give them time to nicely caramelize. Then I can serve my stew right out of the vegetables. The cool thing about this recipe I'm showing you, too, is it's absolutely fantastic.

If you have it and save it for the next day. I think it's even better the next day. So sometimes I like to make it the day before. So we've got all our vegetables in here. Got a little bit more minced garlic for a little added flavor. So I'm gonna sprinkle that right over my vegetables. Got a few sprigs of thyme I like also to include along with my vegetables. And then what we're going to do is we're going to drizzle these vegetables with a bunch of extra virgin olive oil. I'm a member of this fresh pressed olive oil club, and they send these amazing olive oils from around the world. So this is a nice, bold Spanish varietal. You don't want to skimp on the olive oil with these vegetables, trust me. So it's very simple. Olive oil, salt, pepper, and one secret ingredient for the caramelization. Again, if you're carb phobic, you can leave this out. But man, if you want caramelization, raw honey or maple syrup along with that olive oil is just going to amplify the flavor of these vegetables over the top. So I like to drizzle my vegetables with a nice helping of maple syrup or raw honey. I'm going to take my same salt that I used earlier. Salt these guys quite nicely. Again, don't skimp on the flavor of your salt. You use a nice salt. Don't use table salt on your vegetables. You want a really good salt. We're going to put a few twists of black pepper, and by a few, I mean a crap ton, because I also love black pepper. I'm one of those guys who, when they come out at the restaurant with the black pepper grinder and start to grind it over your salad and tell you when to stop. They start giving me funny looks when they're about 30 seconds in. And I haven't said stop yet. So I do some pretty heavy seasoning on my food. So salt, pepper, olive oil, and your sweetener is raw honey or a little bit of maple syrup, or both if you desire. And these vegetables, we just pop these into the fridge. And about a half hour from that meat being done, we throw them in at the same 350 that we're cooking the meat at. And then when you have your stew, the best thing to do is just get your big kind of like shallow bowl, you spoon your caramelized vegetables into the bowl, and then you put your stew on top of that. It's amazing. You can eat this for two or three days. Feed the whole family. So let me show you the last step here. And of course, this is the best part. We're going to take this guy out, and I'm going to drop this onto my Traeger grill at about 350 and set it and forget it for about two or three hours. So here we go.

Gotta pop this bad boy on there.

Close the lid, make sure everything's set. Boom, boom, boom. Dinner's gonna be good tonight. Check out BoundlessCookbook.com for plenty more recipes just like this that are flavorful, natural, healthy, include a few special superfoods and sprinkles of some biohacked ingredients like I just showed you. Thanks for watching and enjoy the cookbook.