Easy Beef Stew for Two

Trim any large fat caps off your meat and cube meat into large bites, season liberally with salt and pepper. Set aside. The salt will encourage natural sugars to come to meats surface for better browning.

In a large stock pot, heat a tablespoon of olive oil on med high heat until nearly smoking

In three batches, pat meat dry and drop into hot pan and sear each side a couple minutes to get a dark brown crust. Do not crowd all the meat into the pan or it will simply steam. Add more oil for each batch. Set browned meat aside.

Add onion, then garlic to the pan and saute a couple minutes. Add balsamic and tomato paste and stir a minute longer. Scrape any bits from bottom of pan.

Add meat to back to the pan and dust liberally with flour. Stir to cook flour 2 minutes.

Add broth, bay leaf, thyme, and Worcestershire. Reduce heat to low.

Add vegetables and can tomatoes with juices. Stir and cover.

Cook on a low simmer for 2 hours, stirring occasionally until meat is fork tender. Add parsley at the finish.

Add more broth if needed or to thicken mix one tablespoon of flour with a little broth and add to pot and continue cooking.

Check at the end for needed salt or pepper. Remove bay leaf before serving.