North African Beef Stew — In The Crockpot.

I love crockpot recipes that do not involve pre-cooking any of the meats. I also like my food spicy.

This North African Beef Stew is super-duper tasty, has a nice bit of spice and, despite what you may think at first glance, the dried fruit makes for a really nice sweet addition. I used a recipe from an old cookbook and improvised/adjusted for my own tastes; what you see below is the recipe that I ended up making today. It was unspeakably good, imho, but we’ll wait and see how Coffee feels about it!

North African Beef Stew
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2 pounds of lean stewing beef
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled, halved lengthwise, sliced 1/2″ thick
1 medium onion, cut into wedges
1 cup water
1 tablespoon concentrated beef stock
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (spicy!)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
8 cloves garlic, minced
20 ounces of diced tomatoes, undrained
1/2 cup dried apricots, quartered
1/2 cup dried plums (prunes), quartered

Directions:

1. Cut meat into 1 inch pieces. In a 3 1/2 or 4 quart crockpot, combine meat, sweet potatoes and onion. Stir in water, concentrated beef stock, cumin, cayenne pepper, cinnamon and garlic

2. Cover and cook on low setting for 7.5-8 hours or on high setting for 3.5-4 hours.

3. Stir in tomatoes and dried apricots and plums/prunes. Cover and cook for 30 minutes more.

4. If desired, serve stew over hot cooked couscous and garnish with chopped peanuts. (I prefer to eat it as is..)