Beef, Barley and Root Vegetable Stew
Slow-cooked beef and pearl barley with carrot, parsnip, and thyme, a heavy pot built to answer the two things pregnancy asks most of a plate: iron your body can use, and something that still sounds good on a hard day.
Why it works
Iron requirements roughly double across pregnancy, and heme iron from red meat gets absorbed several times more efficiently than the non-heme form in plants, without the interference from tea, coffee, and phytates that plant sources have to fight through. Beef also carries zinc, choline, and vitamin B12, three nutrients where requirements climb and intake often does not follow. Barley adds beta-glucan fiber, which matters more than usual here: progesterone slows gut transit through pregnancy, and constipation is one of the most common complaints of the second and third trimesters. Cooking it long and slow turns the whole pot soft, which is its own argument on a day when texture is the problem.
Heme iron bioavailability is well characterised in absorption studies. Requirements in pregnancy are set by the US National Academies at 27 mg a day. Whether to supplement on top of diet is a clinical decision that depends on your ferritin, not something to read off a recipe. Cook the beef through, and talk to your midwife or obstetrician before you change anything here.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 700 g stewing beef, cut into 3 cm pieces
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 3 carrots, cut into thick rounds
- 2 parsnips, cut into thick rounds
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 200 g pearl barley, rinsed
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1.2 litres low-sodium beef stock
- 3 sprigs thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- A handful parsley, chopped, to serve
Method
- Heat the oil in a frying pan over high heat and brown the beef in two batches, three minutes a side. Crowding the pan steams the meat instead, and the browning is most of the flavour.
- Tip the beef into the slow cooker with the onion, carrots, parsnips, garlic, barley, tomato paste, stock, thyme and bay.
- Cook on low for eight hours or on high for five, until the beef pulls apart under a fork and the barley is tender.
- Fish out the bay leaves and the thyme stalks. Taste for salt.
- Cool within two hours, then portion. Add the parsley at serving rather than into the pot, where it blackens.
