Martha Stewart's 2-Step Secret For Better Beef Stew

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While it's true that Martha Stewart excels at all things entertaining, her brand was built on her cooking skills. She's written 100 cookbooks at this point in her career, plus her opus, "Entertaining," re-releases in 2025. So if Stewart reveals a culinary secret or two for making better beef stew, we stand up and take notice. Stewart has two crucial steps for transforming an ordinary pot of beef stew into something restaurant-worthy. And even better? You probably have the ingredients she uses sitting in your kitchen right now. All you need is a little bacon grease and some prepared horseradish.

The first trick to making Stewart's recipe happens right at the beginning when it's time to brown the cut of meat you've chosen for your beef stew. Instead of reaching for olive or vegetable oil, she uses bacon fat to render the meat, which builds a layer of rich, smoky flavor for a complex foundation to the rest of the stew. Hopefully you already know that throwing out bacon grease is a big mistake. But if not, you don't need to make breakfast before you prepare Stewart's stew because you can buy the fat in many grocery stores, including Walmart which sells a 14-ounce tub by Bacon Up. Now if you're worried about the stew coming out too bacon-y, don't be. The finished dish won't taste like a trip to the local diner. Instead, the bacon grease will give the stew a luxurious richness that vegetable oil alone can't provide. 

The second step to making Martha Stewart-worthy beef stew happens at the very end of the process, when it's time to serve. To balance out the richness of the beef and root vegetables in the stew, she adds a dollop of grated horseradish marinated in some white vinegar to each bowl. This cuts through the heaviness of the dish with a hot, sharp flavor. If this sounds maybe a little unexpected, there's actually a precedent for beef and horseradish: prime rib. The rich, fatty cut pairs perfectly with a side of sharp, creamy horseradish sauce, and the same flavor pairing applies to Stewart's stew. 

If the horseradish is too intense in your stew, take a cue from prime rib and mix it with a little sour cream or Greek yogurt to cool it down. Once you try out the flavor combination of bacon grease and horseradish and like how it turns out, don't be afraid to try it on other hearty dishes. You could use the same ingredients in a lamb stew or even in the base for cottage or shephard's pie (which aren't the same thing). It's the perfect kind of low-stakes kitchen experiment that you can try anytime and not worry too much about the outcome, because at the end of the day you know that if Martha uses it, it's probably a good thing.