I am participating in a stew cook-off competition with twelve restaurants involved. Rather than adding the raw, cut and prepared, root-style vegetables (red potatoes, celery, and carrots) near the end of cooking to cook and finish, I am thinking of cooking them separately in salted water, draining and adding to the stew along with frozen peas as it is finished (meat tender).
I am thinking the vegetables will retain more of their inherent individual tastes and flavors, rather than absorbing the flavors of the stew and get lost into a homogenous mix.
Any advice is appreciated, thnk you.
Best Answer
I have played around with this quite a bit myself. For me, boiling and then adding does not work. As suggested in derobert's remark, many of the veg traditionally added to a stew are there not just as filling but to give off their flavor to the stewing liquid. Leaving them out during the stew is detrimental to your flavor.
I have gotten my best results by adding the stock vegetables (carrots, unions, celery, garlic) as early as I normally would and then adding some vegetables late in the process to provide a differing texture to the whole. After some experimentation I have found that quickly stirfrying some green veg gives a very nice effect, as it adds some color and a very different texture to your end result. My personal favorite for this is quartered sprouts, quickly fried at high heat and then dunked in icewater.
Purely from a texture point of view you vcan also get nice results with diced root vegetables such as cabbage turnip and turnip-rooted celery treated in a similar way.