A carefully done stew is a thing of beauty

It's the season for stews, and I, for one, couldn't wait any longer.

After a summer of light fare, tons of vegetables and everything imaginable cooked on the grill, I'm ready for a hearty mixture of slow-cooked meat and vegetables in a rich broth.

Many people think stews are nothing more than throwing a bunch of miscellaneous ingredients in a pot and cooking them to death. But a careful cook knows that he or she will be rewarded by using the proper ingredients cooked in a certain way at a certain temperature.

Stews are all about taking time to develop layers of flavor. If stews had a motto, it might be "easy does it."

Pay attention

Here are some tips for making a super stew. Much of this information was summarized in the February issue of Cook's Illustrated magazine. Having made my share of good and not-so-good stews over the years, I can testify that this is advice you'll want to follow.

□ Choose meat with a decent amount of marbled fat. Sadly for low-fat dieters, low-fat meats will dry out over long cooking -- even when submerged in broth. The fat needs to be woven into the meat muscle for best results. As the meat protein breaks down, the fat essentially bastes it to keep it moist. Good choices include beef chuck, pork butt, lamb shoulder and chicken thigh.

□ Use a Dutch oven that is wide, for browning batches of meat, and heavy, so that it retains heat well.

□ Make sure the pieces of meat are the same size so they cook at the same rate. Too often, packages of "stew beef" contain lots of different sizes. It's better to buy a whole cut and cut it yourself. But if using chicken, don't cut up the thighs. It's best to cook bone-in thighs whole, then skin, bone and shred them after the stew has finished cooking.

□ Brown the meat in small batches. More than a pound of cubed meat in even a large Dutch oven will be too crowded to brown, and it will steam instead. Proper browning ensures a "fond" -- those browned bits on the bottom of the pan that will ultimately enhance the broth.

□ Speaking of the fond, watch out that you don't burn it, which is easy to do when browning two or three batches of meat one after the other in the same pan. If it burns, clean the pan before proceeding to the next batch.

□ Saute such vegetables as onion, garlic and celery. This will provide more flavor than dumping them in the cooking liquid. A little tomato paste cooked with these for the last 2 minutes is a good trick for adding flavor to stews.

□ Whatever broth you add, make sure it is low in sodium. Otherwise, the stew may become overly salty as it cooks down.

□ Add the other vegetables gradually, based on how long they need to cook, so none of them turns mushy. You want well-cooked but distinctly visible and flavored vegetables in the finished stew. Figure on about one hour for bite-size cubes or thick slices of potatoes and carrots, a little less for canned beans and chopped bell peppers, 20 minutes or less for frozen vegetables and a bare minute for fresh herbs. Greens may need just a couple of minutes -- say for tender baby spinach -- or 30 minutes or more for chopped kale or other heartier, tougher types.

□ Cook the stew in the oven. This will save a lot of stirring and worrying about burning on the bottom of the pan. The oven also provides much more even heat than the stove top. Plan on 300 degrees to keep the stew at a simmer, but under a boil. Boiling will toughen the meat.

□ Cook the stew just until it's done. A good test is to take two forks and stab the meat. When you pull the forks in opposite directions, the strands of meat should easily separate. For 1- to 1½-inch cubes of meat, plan on 2 to 2½ hours.

□ Degrease the finished stew. Between a couple batches of browning and the use of fatty cuts of meat, the stew probably will have some fat floating in it. There are two good ways to degrease the stew. One is to strain all the liquid into a measuring cup and let it sit about 5 minutes until the fat rises to the top, then ladle it out. The other is to put the stew in the fridge at least six hours. The fat will solidify on the top and then can be easily pulled off.

I like the last method for degreasing, in part because stews are almost always better the day after they are made.

■ Michael Hastings, the Journal's Food editor, can be contacted by phone at 727-7394, e-mail at mhastings@wsjournal.com, or mail at c/o Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. His most recent columns can be read on our Web site at www.journalnow.com.