Grandma Barn's Beef Stew

I’m going to be frank, here: this is not the way I make beef stew. The reason I don’t is because my family doesn’t appreciate this. But I want to record this recipe because it is the comfort food of my childhood.

• beef, cooked. This can be leftover pot roast, you can get a couple pounds of stew beef and cook overnight in the crockpot on low, or you can get a couple cans of beef in the canned mean aisle at the grocery. The more beef you have, the more people you can feed, but the point here is to make a little meat feed more people than it would on its own. I try to have 1.5 cups of cooked beef. (NOT HAMBURGER. Just stop that nonsense right now.)
• water, 2-3 cups
• Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix. (You can try the store brand if you want, but it won’t taste right.) One packet for 2 cups of water, if you need 3 cups of water, add a beef bouillon cube.
• 3-4 potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1-2 onions, diced (doesn't have to be small)
• a can of diced tomatoes, juice and all (Not Ro-Tel!)
• other vegetables if you want them (corn, green beans, Veg-All, diced carrots, mushrooms, etc.) When I was still trying to make my family like this, I had the most success with corn, green beans was less-well-received, but carrots were okay.  Mushrooms were right out.
• 1.5 tablespoons pearl barley

You’ll notice that some of the ratios aren’t precise. Soup is, for the most part, very forgiving.

In a 4 quart pot, mix the cooked beef, water, onion soup mix, potatoes, and onions. Bring it to a boil over high heat and then reduce the flame to simmer. Cook uncovered until the potatoes are tender and the onions translucent. Add in the tomatoes and any other vegetables you want, and the barley. Keep cooking until the barley plumps up. Serve with hearty bread or crackers.

Note: if you have gravy from your pot roast or drippings from cooking the stew beef, this makes the stew that much more fantastic. Also, while my mother called this stew, it isn’t really unless you thicken the broth.

To thicken the broth: whisk 1/2 cup all-purpose flour into 1 cup COLD water, and while the soup is boiling, whisk this mixture slowly into the broth. That is, whisk fast and pour slowly. Pouring slowly does two things: it prevents lumps of dough from forming like little miniature and tasteless dumplings, and you can see when to stop adding the thickener. You don’t want this to congeal too much, only enough so that if you had to eat this off a plate instead of out of a bowl, you could.