Recipe: Slow cooker beef burgundy

Always on the look out for a new way to use my slow cooker, I landed on this recipe from this month's copy of Family Circle.

It's not my ideal slow cooker recipe as it does require some cooking before you actually put everything in the pot, but it was delicious. It's a great, hearty meal on these cool fall days.

Here's how it's  done: 

1 14.4 ounce bag of frozen pearl onions, thawed

Put the beef, 2 tablespoons flour and some salt and pepper in a resealable plastic bag. Shake it up until its evenly coated. Melt the butter and oil in a skillet and brown the beef for five minutes. I had to do this in a couple of batches. Put the browned beef in the slow cooker.

To your skillet, add one cup of the broth. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to get the bits off the bottom of the pan. Pour it into the slower cooker with the vegetables, red wine and remaining beef broth. Put the pearl onions on top. Cook on high for five hours or low for 6.5 hours. 

Remove the beef and vegetables from the cooker. Whisk 3 tablespoons of flour with 3 tablespoons of water in a small bowl. Pour the hot liquid from the cooker into a saucepan and whisk the flour mixture into it. Boil for about three minutes until its thickened and then stir it into the meat and veggies. Add more salt to taste.

Serve with mashed potatoes or noodles.

Yum! Next on my slower cooker list is the lentil soup from the same issue.