Baked for 4 hours, this Easy Beef Stew is hearty, tasty and filling. The perfect dinnertime meal that you can serve up on a cool winters night that is comforting and effortless.
Preheat the oven to 300°F. Spray a 2.5-quart baking dish with cooking spray, set aside.
If the stew meat is in large chunks, cut into bite-sized pieces.
Place the beef, carrots, onion, celery, tomato soup, salt, and sugar into a large bowl, stir to combine and everything is coated in the soup. Add this mixture to the prepared baking dish.
Tuck the bay leaf into the stew. Cover with foil and cook for 4 hours or until the beef is tender and the liquid has slightly thickened. We like to stir it every hour or so to see how it is doing. You can start testing the meat at the 3-hour mark to see if it is tender. The smaller the chunks, the faster it will cook.
Add the peas and mix them into the stew. Cover for 5 minutes so the peas thaw and warm. Serve over mashed potatoes with parsley garnish if using.
Notes
We have never tested this with potatoes directly in the stew, so we do not know how it will turn out.
You can serve this plain and not over anything.
This can be frozen, see above on tips to do that.
Make sure that you use a 2.5-quart baking dish, this is essential to how the stew will turn out.