Creole Beef Stew-Styou Bef Kreol

This Creole Beef Stew- Styou Bef Kreol– is hearty and flavourful. Cooked in a rich and savoury sauce, it is soul-satisfying comfort at its best.

This Creole Beef Stew- Styou Bef Kreol– takes some time to prepare but I promise it is well worth the effort. Aside from being delicious, it is also my all-time most popular dish. This stew can be prepared a day ahead; in fact, you should, because the flavour improves when it is a day old.

Cattle in Seychelles

Historical trivia

Although goats and chicken were introduced into the new colony very early during settlement, it appears that cattle were only introduced around late 1771 or 1772. They were shipped across from the Island of Mauritius on the ‘La Marianne’ which was under the command of M. Sicard.

Youthful memories

Cattle is not reared in any big quantity on the islands. This is mainly due to the lack of space because the islands are small and hilly. Consequently, freshly slaughtered beef was and still is quite a rare commodity. In spite of this, every now and then, a cow will be slaughtered in the different villages. I remember as a young boy growing in the village of Grand’Anse on Praslin island, a cow would be slaughtered approximately once a month usually on the day before a special festivity like Christmas, Easter or New Year. We had only one butcher in the village who was also a shop keeper, restaurateur, as well as dance hall operator on Saturday evenings. His name was Ahfan and he used to sell his meat from the local market in the centre of the village.

Traditional Meat cuts

The easiest way to buy beef from the local village market was to ask the butcher for ‘en liv laviann bef’ meaning ‘a pound of beef’ and you would get what the butcher had closer to him.  It could be any cut.

 I do, however, recall a few cuts that you could request, and these were the bascot, derived for the French word ‘basses-côtes’, meaning chuck steak; the bavet, from the French word ‘bavette’ meaning flank steak;  lalang bef  from the French ‘langue de bœuf ‘  meaning beef tongue; and the gradoub. The gradoub, or ‘gras-double’ in French, is tripe that comes form the thickest part of the first stomach or rumen (fr. panse) of the cow. “Gras-Double” is a misleading term to anyone who knows some French, as the word ‘gras’ usually indicates ‘fat.’ Here, though, it doesn’t mean ‘double fat’, just the ‘fattest’, i.e. thickest part of the “panse.”

The butcher would wrap your meat nicely in giant taro leaf or fey vya , photo below. The leaf was always left whole because, if cut,  the sap that oozes out can irritate a delicate skin. There was no glad wrap or plastic bag then!

Things have changed now, and you can buy most cuts of beef from the large shops and butchery and, as expected, most of it are still imported.

The recommended meat cut

We suggest that you use the beef chuck for this stew. Beef chuck comes from the forequarter of the cow, consisting of parts of the neck, shoulder blade, and upper arm. These muscles are frequently exercised and contain a lot of connective tissue, including collagen, which partially melts during cooking. This means chuck can be tough, fatty and gristly without proper cooking but produces a very flavourful dish when cooked properly.

Look for chuck that is well-marbled, which means that it should have a good amount of white veins of fat running through it. Stay away from meat generically packaged as “stew meat,” especially if it looks lean (I can guarantee you it will not get tender, no matter how long you cook it)

No red wine

The traditional Creole beef stew- Styou Bef Kreol– does not have any wine as an ingredient despite its French connection. This is mainly due to the fact that red wine was not readily available in the early days in Seychelles, and if it were, it was reserved for the well to do landowners, locally known then as the ‘grand blanc’.

Preparing the Creole beef stew- Styou Bef Kreol

Wash and peel the potatoes and pat dry. Cut into bite size  and keep. Prepare all the spices and herbs.

Remove any visible sinew and extra fat from the beef cut. Do not remove all fat because you need some fat to flavour the stew. Cut the beef into small bite size cubes and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the flour over and toss the seasoned beef to coat it on all sides.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large pot over medium heat and sweat onion. Add the ginger and garlic and stir until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Add the beef and stir to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Cover the pot with a heavy lid and allow the spices to blend into the meat. Let it steam for about three minutes.

After you have browned your beef you will notice some brown bits left in the bottom of the pot.  The culinary term for this is ‘fond’ and it is critical in the flavouring of your stew.

What is Fond?

Let us digress a little bit and talk about fond. Literally translated, fond in French  means “the bottom” or “base” and quite simply, is the dark matter that sticks to your pan after browning meat or vegetables on the stove top, or at the bottom of a roasting dish out of the oven. Fond is formed when proteins are exposed to heat, turning food that was once tender and pink into something crusty and brown. Chemists call this process the Maillard reaction, wherein a rainbow of chemicals erupt from the denatured proteins, unlocking flavour combinations that humans are hard-wired to find irresistible.

Fond may seem small, but the impact it has on flavour is huge. In order to retrieve these flavours, you have to deglaze the pot.

Deglazing

Deglazing is a cooking technique for dislodging the fond from the bottom of the pan and incorporating it into a sauce. This is done by pouring a liquid into the pot and using a wooden spoon or spatula to scrape the  bottom of the pot to loosen the fond and turning it into a sauce.  This method is the cornerstone of many well-known sauces and gravies.

In our case we will deglaze the fond by adding the water. The deglazing can also be made with wine, brandy, stock and many other types of liquid.  In Seychelles we did not have the opportunity to have access to these fancy ingredients and this is why we use water.

Now that we have talked about fond and deglazing, let us get back to preparing our stew. Once the the deglazing is done, turn the heat to a simmer and cover the pot with a heavy lid and allow the beef to cook for about 45 minutes or until it is tender. Check it occasionally to see if it is tender using a fork. Add some more water if the sauce starts to dry out.

Stir in all the other ingredients and let the stew simmer for 15 minutes using low heat. Beef stew needs time for the flavour to develop and  for the broth to thickened. .

If you add your last set of ingredients too early, especially the potatoes, they will break up and thicken your stew too much.

At the end of the cooking process, the meat would have become meltingly tender and enveloped in a rich, deeply flavored sauce. Taste the stew and season with additional salt and pepper, if necessary. Serve warm.

Did you make this recipe?

I hope you will enjoy cooking this dish. Please let me know how it turned out for you. If you have a different version of the recipe or have related questions, please leave your comments below.

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