Pork Neck Bone Stew

We fed 9 people (incl. 4 little kids) with this. Good eating, all homecooking! Neck bones are cheap and yield more meat than you'd expect.

1 pound pork neck bones sprinkled with seasoning salt and 11/2 cup water
-slow cook in crock pot on low 6 hours or until meat falls off bone, then set to warm until you want to make the stew. Turn off and cool bones a while before making stew. DO NOT throw out the broth!

Assemble stew in large pot and boil:
3-4 cups water
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1-2 1/2 cup chopped red potatoes (more or less to taste)
1/4 cup chopped onion (I actually use a bit less because I have a kid that doesn't like onion chunks)
Several tablespoons barley 4-6 Tbs
Several tablespoons slow cooking rice 4-6 Tbs (I use Jasmine rice)
few shakes of seasoning salt
1-2 tsp of salt
1tsp black pepper
2 Tbs onion powder

Boil covered until all veggies are soft and barely is soft (barely takes longer than rice)
While this cooks take your neck bones and separate all meat from them. Use two bowls one for the meat, the other for the bones. BE CAREFUL to get all little bone fragments. Set meat aside. Go through the broth in slow cooker and remove all bone fragments as well.

When stew veggies are soft turn off and add all meat and broth to your age stew pot. Stir and taste, add salt if needed, add water if you want. The flavor should be rich but may need to be diluted a little depending on your quality of neck bones. Ours were great.

My husband ate his with bread. Everyone asked for more! Yum!

Winter Beef Stew

We love stew. I discovered a way for my little ones to be able to enjoy it safely and easily is to cook the stew meat in the crock pot. This makes the meat so tender and soft and little ones can chew it. We all like it better too as the flavors are divine.

Generally this is how I make stew...
I start my stew meat and/or beef bones in the crock with a lot of water. 4-8 cups of water (depends on how much stew you are making. I use 1 lb stew meat and 3-4 meaty beef bones. Let meat cook ahead of time or with everything in the pot. If I don't have time to chop my veggies I throw my neat and water in the crock to start it ahead of time.

Add:
garlic powder to taste (1 tbs)
onion powder to taste (2 tbs)
salt (to taste)
sometimes I'll add a few teaspoons of organic salt-less seasoning mix
chopped onions (1/2 or 1 c I puree this because I have one kid that doesn't like chucks of onion)
chopped celery  (1/4 c)
potato chunks or diced  (2 c)
other options for good ad-ins (3/4 cup fresh or frozen): greens beans, chopped carrots, corn, peas, caned or freshly soaked lima beans, barely. I love butter beans in stew! YUM-O
Optional: tomatoes

Stew is what you make when it's cold, and what you make when you have a bunch of "stuff" on hand that will go in stew. Nothing says comfort food and relaxing home-time like stew!