Binging with Babish: Bear Stew from Red Dead Redemption 2

Hurry, Pearson! We are starving. It will be ready! When it's ready... Hello friends. Welcome back to Bingin' with Babish. I'm Arthur Morgan, replacing Babish, because he was too loud to go out into the woods. So I'm making Pearson's special: wild game

stew

. First things first, we need to light a crackling fire. You can do this however you want, but I prefer to achieve a sort of teepee effect. I think in the long run this concentrates the heat better in the center of the fire. Anyway, we'll turn it on and not pay attention to the watch we forgot to take off.

And then it will be time to install our kitchen platform. I don't know how these damn things work. Normally, I'd have Pearson do this, but he's got his head so far up his ass that he's fishing for cowpies. Anyway, once we get everything ready, we'll turn up the heat. We want a good fire strength because the first thing we are going to do is brown it and then we will let it burn a little so that the

stew

simmers. Now, back to the butcher block, let's prepare our vegetables. We're going to start with a sweet Spanish onion and you don't have to cut it nice and fancy.

We're not going to cook for the Queen here. Let's move that out of the way to make room for some celery. It's not a stew without celery. And next, I will teach you a trick for peeling carrots. If you're not highborn and don't have a vegetable peeler, you can use the sharp edge of your knife and watch those carrots pop out of the skin. And then we're going to cut them into nice big pieces, because we don't want them to break down in the stew. And there you have it, the basic vegetables. If you want to be a really fancy guy, you can add some minced garlic and maybe some herbs, like a bay leaf or thyme.

I personally don't give a damn, but I imagine this is what Babish would have done. And then it's time to start working with our meat. First, we have the hindquarters of a whitetail deer. We will cut it into stew-sized pieces. Then next we get a cottontail rabbit that, admittedly, is a little frozen. I know it's not exactly period appropriate, but the damn thing just wouldn't defrost! In the end, it helped make it a little easier to cut into small stew-sized pieces. I'm going to leave the legs there, I think that will add a little flavor. But now the main moment has come: real

bear

meat.

Now

bear

meat is considered quite fatty, so we want to get rid of as much fat as possible. But don't throw away that fat, because we're going to take out some of it to brown the meat in the pot. Anyway, with that I... I think I have to... stop doing this because it's really hell in my throat, and slowly, but surely, return to the 21st century... Ok, everyone modes, We're placing a heavy Dutch oven over our fire, then we turn up the heat a little bit because we want it to be super hot by this stage, because we're going to brown our meat.

Now I'm going to use a little bit of water to make sure that our pan is very hot, and it is. So now is the perfect time to use our bear fat. We'll add it to the hot pan, letting it sizzle and sizzle for about 15 minutes until we've gotten maybe a quarter cup of liquid fat, eagerly awaiting the receipt of our meat. But before those flavors join the party, we have to remove the leftover fat and prepare the meat a little. We'll combine them all together in a pot or bowl, if it's 2018, and bowls exist, and season them generously with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.

Don't worry, I pre-ground it before leaving the house and a generous pinch of flour. We want this to form a chewy, sticky surface on the outside of the meat that will help thicken the stew in the future. Mix it all together until it's evenly coated, then arrange it in a single layer. We get color and flavor in the meat, and guess what else we get? That is right sweety. I don't know what "honey" is, but this Babish guy really gets a boner. Arthur, relax. This is a... family show. Anyway, we will do it in two batches to make sure all the meat is well browned.

But this is optional: if you only brown half the meat, you'll still get tons of flavor. Either way, once everyone is browned and happy, take a look at the stuff we have at the bottom of the pot. Arthur is right: I am totally unconditional for affection. And like most stews, now is the time to add the onions, stir them around a little. We're just sweating these onions, which means we want them to become translucent around the edges and maybe get a little bit of color. Once they have it, add the minced garlic and celery and sauté for another minute until fragrant.

And finally the highlight of my day. It's time to deglaze. And if you've seen the show, you should already know that we're going to pull all that good stuff out of the bottom of the boat and then bring back our three different types of wild animals to the party. and all these flavors are about to really get to know each other, as if they became best friends. The stew in the game looks red, which to me says Brunswick stew: a stew that has a base of water or beef broth and crushed tomatoes. According to this loving tribute, the first Brunswick stew was made in 1898 and the game is set in 1899, making Pearson a trendsetter.

So along with these three bay leaves, we've probably added two cups of crushed tomatoes and about four cups of beef broth. And now we just have to let it cook for about an hour. This is a good time to sit and reflect on the big questions in life. Why does almost all bear meat contain trichinosis? That's a good question and it's true. Most bear meat contains trichinosis parasites, but all we have to do is cook the meat to over 145° Fahrenheit, which we'll go much further than. Now, with 30 minutes left, we add the potatoes and carrots. We have to let this cook for 30 more minutes and that's it, whoops!

Maybe you'll find a more structurally sound log to sit on and wait until the carrots and potatoes are tender and tender, and your stew has taken on a very stew-like quality. And there it is: venison, rabbit and bear stew. It even looks like the one in the game, although I recognized that there were mushrooms in the one in the game and I forgot to get mushrooms, so I'm sorry. But let's talk about the meat. The deer were from Colorado deer, they probably fed on grain and therefore were not as playful. And then the bear. The bear was like a sweeter version of venison, not at all greasy as it is often described because we trimmed most of the fat away.

And the rabbit not only tasted like chicken, it looked like chicken. Overall, it was a pretty good stew. I mean, it's essentially a recipe that dates back to 1899. It's a healthy, filling staple that does the best it can with meat as delicate as wild game, and it may not have joined my clean plate club, but let's ask Arthur. . Babish, you're a city boy and that's making me soft. The only thing I don't like about this stew is that it's made by Pearson. LENNY!