Why am I making stews in the middle of summer? I don’t know. It just sounded tasty… and making hot food in the middle of summer never really bothered me much. So, if it’s just too hot for you to even utter the word “stew,” you’ll just have to keep this one bookmarked for later this year!
While perusing through some recipes the other day, I found this recipe and my mouth started watering. I hadn’t cooked red meat in a while so I decided to give it a shot… with my alterations, of course! Despite making some budget/availability cuts to the ingredients list, this is still one of the most expensive dishes I’ve ever made for the blog. But, beef is expensive pretty much any way you cut it. Well, the dried fruit and wine didn’t help the price either. Save this one for special occasions!
If you’re not familiar with Moroccan style flavors, this stew is slightly sweet, slightly spicy, and very savory. Most americans are used to cinnamon and allspice used in sweet dishes but they swing both ways. Really! You might be a little leery of the dried fruit with the beef, but it works. I promise. Traditionally this is probably served over couscous but I used jasmine rice. I’ve got another couscous recipe this week and I didn’t want to over do it.
Moroccan Beef Stew
Servings 6Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp olive oil ($0.22)
- 1 1/2 lbs. beef stew meat ($6.97)
- 1 medium yellow onion ($0.76)
- 2 inches fresh ginger ($0.33)
- 1/2 Tbsp minced garlic ($0.12)
- 1/2 Tbsp allspice ($0.07)
- 1/2 Tbsp cinnamon ($0.07)
- 1 cup red wine, optional ($2.52)
- 3 oz. tomato paste ($0.28)
- 1 Tbsp honey ($0.11)
- 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper ($0.02)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.02)
- 3 cups water ($0.00)
- 7 whole dried apricots ($0.62)
- 1/4 cup raisins ($0.14)
- 1 1/2 cups dry jasmine rice ($0.72)
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium high heat. When the oil is very hot (but not smoking), add the beef. Cook the beef until it is well browned and all of the juices have cooked off (about 15 minutes).
- While the beef is cooking, dice the onion. Peel the ginger with a vegetable peeler or scrape the skin off with a spoon and then grate about 2 inches on a cheese grater. Add the onion, ginger, and minced garlic to the pot with the beef and cook until tender (about 5 minutes).
- Add the allspice and cinnamon to the pot. Stir and cook for about one minute. Add the red wine to deglaze the bottom of the pot. If you’re not using wine, the water in the next step will do the same.
- Add the water, the tomato paste, honey, crushed red pepper, and salt. Give everything a good stir to dissolve the tomato paste. Let it come up to a boil then reduce the heat to low, place a lid on top, and let it simmer for one hour.
- While the stew is simmering, cook the jasmine rice. Add the dry rice and 3 cups of water to a medium pot. Bring it up to a boil with a lid in place. As soon as it reaches a rolling boil, reduce the heat to the lowest setting and let simmer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, turn the heat off and let the pot sit, undisturbed, until you are ready to serve.
- When the stew has simmered for about an hour, roughly chop the apricots and add them to the stew along with the raisins. Let the stew simmer for another 15-20 minutes without a lid to allow it to thicken. You may need to increase the heat just slightly to keep it simmering without the lid to hold the heat in.
- Fluff the rice with a fork, pile some into a bowl, and then ladle the stew on top. Enjoy!
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Step By Step Photos
This is the beef stew meat that I used. Stew meat is usually taken from a tougher cut because it is meant to cook long and slow. When tough cuts of meat with a lot of connective tissue are cooked for a long time, the connective tissue breaks down and you get that nice, tender, fall-apart goodness.
Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Once the oil is nice and hot, add the beef and sear it on all sides until brown.
Your beef may let off a lot of moisture which will prevent the browning effect that we want. If this happens, just keep it cookin’ till the water evaporates off and the meat starts to brown again.
See, eventually the moisture will cook off and it will start searing again. This is good, it makes flavor.
While the beef is cooking, dice the onion and grate the ginger (peel the ginger first).
Add them to the pot along with the minced garlic and cook until tender (about 5 min.).
Add the allspice and cinnamon and cook for about 1 minute more.
Now it’s time to add the wine to deglaze. I used wine that I had frozen specifically for cooking so that I wouldn’t have to open a new bottle every time… because no one wants to be a wino. …at least I think? Anyway, if you don’t want to use the wine, just go ahead to the next step.
Add the wine and stir it around until all of the little yummy bits have dissolved off of the bottom of the pot. If you don’t have wine, a little water will work but just with less flavor.
Finally, add 3 cups of water, the tomato paste, crushed red pepper, honey, and salt. Bring it up to a boil, reduce the heat to low, place a lid on top, and let it simmer for 1 hour.
While the stew is cooking, cook the rice. Also, roughly chop the apricots. I chopped mine to about the same size as the raisins. I had both regular and gold raisins so I used them both. 1/4 cup total.
After the stew has simmered for an hour, remove the lid, add the fruit, and let simmer for about 15-20 minutes more. You may need to raise the heat just slightly to keep it simmering. You want some of the liquid to boil off so that it will thicken. The pectins in the fruit will also help the sauce thicken.
Ladle about a cup of the stew over a heaping pile of rice and enjoy!
Delish! I used chicken broth instead of wine. Tried with chicken breast the first time and it was good. Then beef the second time as the recipe calls for and significantly better. The second time I did use more paste, spices and broth so I had more sauce, not quite double. My new favorite meal!
This was very tasty. Does anyone have advice for making sure that the beef actually ends up tender? I followed the directions pretty much exactly, and definitely simmered for 1.5 hours total, but the beef was not tender. = (
I’m still cooking mine but I believe I should have tried this in the crockpot
FYI — the link to the slow cooker version of this recipe leads you to a recipes for pudding cookies.
Thanks for the heads up! Looks like they removed that page and redirected the link to pudding cookies for some reason. :P
This is an outstanding meal. Probably my best internet recipe find. My husband and I have always been fans, and now it’s the favorite meal of our picky 5 year old who won’t eat any other meals we cook. Every week at the grocery store, he begs for us to get ingredients to cook Moroccan beef stew. We triple the apricots and raisins. It’s delicious!
Could this recipe be made with another type of meat? Maybe pork? My boyfriend doesn’t eat red meat but I just LOVE this dish. It’s one of my favorites.
Hmm, that’s a tough call. I really like the way red meat pairs with these flavors. It might just come down to a matter of personal preference.
I like to pack as much hidden veg in these stews as possible for my fussy kids plus husband lol can you recommend any I can get away with adding please that won’t ruin the flavour
Hi Lauren! I’ve successfully made this using chicken (both breasts and thighs have worked). I follow the recipe exactly but swap the beef for chicken.
Add a cup of cooked or canned chick peas along with the apricots to stretch it out and add flavor and fiber…And very Moroccan.
I would rate it 10 stars if I could. I doubled the recipe so browning the meat took an extra 5 minutes to reduce the liquid. The only change I made was to season the meat with salt and pepper before browning it. I just think that’s something you should ALWAYS do. But everything else was exactly as directed and it was incredible! I’m sure the leftovers will be even better just like chili is always better the second day. Emailing the recipe to my friend who adored it! Thank you thank you!!
This dish is so good. It is a go-to when I’m having company for dinner. I serve it with couscous instead of rice.
Outstanding! This made it into our regular rotation and has been in it for years now. It’s so wonderful to have a delicious dish that’s not hard to cook and isn’t just some version of pasta and sauce. The beef, apricots, and raisins are a unique savory and sweet combination. It stands out among our other dishes. Thrilled to have found this recipe, thank you!
Getting bored of my usual winter stew (potatos, carots, and tutabegas), I loosely followed this spiced-up recipes. Never did I think that cinnamon, dried fruit, and beef go this well together. My wife insisted to add a vegetable, so I added broccoli chopped into small pieces at the very end after the apricots and raisins so as to keep them crunchy. The result was delicious. Thank you so much for expanding my horizons … with ideas that allow plenty of new experimentation. I will try this recipe again, perhaps following it more closely (I did not have ginger or garlic), marinating the beef in port over night. This is exciting fun to cook and eat with a good Zinfandel [a cup of which also entered the stew.]
This was SUCH a hit at my house. I had a moment of panic after adding the spices because it smelled so strongly of cinnamon, but it mellowed out beautifully after stewing. The recipe is somewhat customizable – I used chicken thighs instead of beef and added chopped carrots. YUM. Adding it to my recipe rotation.
I’m glad to hear that the swap of beef for chicken worked nicely! Enjoy Stephanie!
I love this recipe!!! I’ve made it twice and it gets better each time. Someone gifted me with a bottle of port which I don’t drink. So, I used it and soaked the meat and dried fruit in it overnight. I also added a tsp of cumin and a tsp of tumeric and it came out great. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. My guests loved it as much as I did. :)
I’ve made this recipe like three times in the last month. Its status as a favorite is assured.
I’ve come here today, with this stew still in my mouth as I type, to announce that carrots make a fantastic addition to this stew to beef up the veggie content and diversify the color. I may try bell pepper and/or sweet potato next time as well.
For there will be a next time. Oh, my, yes.
Oh, nice call! I bet carrots ARE great in this! Thanks for sharing. :)
can you freeze this one?
I don’t remember if I tried freezing this one, but I would guess that it would work well.
I froze this stew and the sweet potatoes got softer after re-heating but it was still very delicious.
Hi, could I make this in a crock pot? If so how should I go about it?
You could probably just add the ingredients to a slow cooker and cook on high for four hours (or low for 8 hrs), but you will be missing the browning of the meat step, which adds quite a bit of depth to the flavor.
I cooked this the other night (without the wine) and my husband and I both enjoyed it. It added a little something different to our usual menu, and gave me a way to work some more variety into our diets. The meat was a little tough at the end of cooking, but that may have been the quality of the meat and not the recipe. We’ll be trying this one again. :)
I just got done making this and it come out absolutely unreal. This definitely goes into regular rotation.
This is probably a really dumb question, but if I don’t have wine do I put an extra cup of water into the pot or just stick with three cups?
It’s not a dumb question. :) You won’t need extra water, just use some of the three cups listed to deglaze (dissolve the brown bits from the bottom of the pot) before you add the rest of the ingredients.
This is the third recipe that I have made from this blog – it was absolutely delicious (as were the previous two)! I did make a couple of modifications – only used 2 cups of water, and used brown sugar cubes in lieu of honey. I also used chill sauce as I ran out of red pepper flakes. The stew was succulent, tender and bursting with flavour – even my 2.5 year old ate the meal with vigour!
Congratulations Beth on another excellent recipe! Well Done!
This dish is absolutely delicious!!!!!!! I followed the recipe exactly – only added extra on the red pepper, cinnamon and allspice – and I added paprika since I am Hungarian (and Moroccans love paprika too). My husband is from Africa, and he really likes it too – If he likes something, it is very good and very authentic as well. He said it needed a little more salt is all. Anyway I highly recommend this delicious meal. The apricots and raisins are very good in it, and I am sure better than substitutions. Thanks for sharing it!
I accidentally made this with five spice instead of allspice, I hope it still turns out good..
Absolutely delicious . Thank you again for an amazing recipe. I didn’t have wine and apricots so I used broth and raisins instead and I add some vegetables (carrots, celery, sweet potatoes)
It tastes the same way as you described it, a little sweet, a little spicy and very savory.
Another winner. Thank you.
Excellent recipe! I didn’t have dried apricots or raisins so I used apricot chutney and crasins. It worked perfectly in a crockpot after I cooked the meat, spices and onion on the stove. I also added carrots, some cayenne (I like spicy), 2tsp fenugreek, and a some dried ginger. I love Indian spices!
I’m trying to bulk this up with a few more veggies to reduce the calorie count. Any recommendations? I was thinking some red peppers.
Yes, red and/or green bell peppers might work. I think I would probably just cook a vegetable side dish and make my portions of the stew a bit smaller.
Looks delish!
I recently bought a frozen meal that was a moroccan style lamb with cous cous and I really liked the flavors, so I thought I would see if you had anything similar so that I could recreate it at home.
Voila! You didn’t disappoint. I do think that instead of the dried fruit I will use sweet potato, mostly because I have some I need to use up.
Super excited for this!
The recipe was delicious, but one point to clarify – is the 3 cups water listed in the ingredients for the stew or the rice? I put it in the stew, but it was too watery. Had to thicken with more tomato paste. Also, I put the whole thing in my slow cooker for about 5 hours, which makes the beef amazing.
Oh, you’re right, that is confusing! 3 cups of water for the stew and then the rice needs 3 cups to cook as well.
Are there any alternative options for the ingredients? For example, what if you have no wine?
You can just leave it out and use water only, or you can use a little beef stock instead.
We enjoyed this recipe but found that our personal preference is to add more salt than is called for in many of your recipes. We added about two teaspoons of kosher salt and it was perfect.
Do you think pearl onions would work in this? I have a handful in my pantry I’d like to use up, but I’m not sure if it would be too much onion per bite :-/
I guess it depends on how much you like onions? :) I think I would like it.
I loved that this was a set of flavors that we don’t often eat. It made my house smell amazing! I liked it alright, my 2.5 year old LOVED it. Just my husband wasn’t so crazy about it (and he’s the one who picked it!) Next time I’ll really have to add the red wine, I skipped it this time and I do think it would add a lot! Thank you for this recipe and bringing something exciting and new to our senses :)
I love this recipe! I’ve made it a few times now, I’ve added potatoes in it and that was really yummy! It just added more to the dish and made it extra hearty. I also serve it over cous cous when I make it. So so good!
I was wondering if lamb would be good in this recipe. I know it isn’t very budget friendly, but my boyfriend is from India, so we don’t eat beef in our house. Sometimes I crave something meaty and this sounds perfect for us.
I think lamb would be a natural fit for this recipe :)
Ok, since you’re like a gourmet chef here, I gotta share this with you. Fermented Lemons! From what I understand, Moroccans eat this with this type of stew & let me tell you, they’re delicious & very easy to make! & they give a good healing probiotic punch!
Nourished kitchen’s simple recipe:
http://nourishedkitchen.com/morrocan-preserved-lemons/
Oooh, thanks! I bet I’d love those! I love anything lemon and tend to like fermented things, too. I can’t wait to try it!
I must agree with that last post. this is a really good blog….yummy I might say.
You blog is wonderful. I have to say, I’m a bit tired of blogs in general and people prattling on about themselves on the web (!) but everything about yours is well thought out, intelligent and endlessly delicious. Congrats to you. And when does the cookbook come out?
For those making this the crockpot, how long do you cook it, and do you brown the beef first?
In morocco this is considered a tagine and would be eaten only with khoobz (bread) no couscous or rice :).
yum! making this right now, it smells so good. Thanks for the recipe :)
Thank you for posting this recipe. I made it tonight and it was delicious! I normally can’t cook to save my life but your recipes seem to be really easy! I also made the glazed pork chops. They turned to be amazing too! – Kate
This was AMAZING. I loved the way the raisins kind of popped with the juice…
I have made this recipe a couple of times, and it is amazing. The apricots, melt down and give this dish a great flavor. I love your site. Thanks, for the recipe posting.
I’ve never had kabocha but chickpeas would be awesome in this. Since they’re already cooked, I would add them near the end and just let them heat through.
I am thinking about making this in the slow cooker tomorrow for dinner. How do you think it would be if I added peeled and cubed kabocha squash? When should I add it? Also, what if I added 1 cup cooked chickpeas? Would that be too much?
Beth your recipes are magical. My friend directed me to this blog recently and I’ve been hooked! I have a delicious recipe for Moroccan chicken that is a favorite among people that know me so when I saw this I was super excited to try it.
THANKS Leslie! I think I fixed it :D Please let me know if you have any other issue with it!
Hey, I tried to share this with your buttons there on facebook, but it is saying that it doesn’t exist. Just wanted you to know.
The next time you do this recipe try it in a crock pot. And you’ll see the difference, and will never want to use another appliance, after that because the meat is just so tender.
Oooh, sounds amazing. I can’t wait to try it!
how awesome is that!? I’m excited!
Plus Frozen Wine = Wine Slushy. Sounds good to me!
Leslie – Yes, the original recipe actually called for prunes but I had raisins in zee house :) heheh
Do you think substituting prunes for the raisins would work well? It’s what we currently have in zee house.
mmm i made a moroccan chicken dish the other day that had apricots and raisins in, id never baked a savoury dish with them before but they were so lovely in the final meal. Definitely loving the sound of this recipe :)
Wow that sounds amazing. I love a good beef stew with red wine cooked in.