V8 Juice Is The Flavor-Packed Ingredient For A Better Beef Stew

A beef stew is typically made with tender chunks of succulent short ribs, chuck roast, or stew meat, flour, seasonings, sauces, potatoes, broth, and all kinds of flavorful vegetables, making for a delicious and hearty meal. However, this doesn't have to complete your list of ingredients to make a tasty beef stew. In fact, there may be an item sitting in your refrigerator that you can add to your dish to elevate it from good to great. That item is V8 juice, which can add all kinds of delectable vegetable flavors and textures to your beef stew.

V8's Original Plant-Powered Drink contains seven vegetables: lettuce, carrots, spinach juice, watercress, beets, parsley, and celery. When added to the stock for beef stew, V8 Juice enriches the stew's vegetable flavors without overwhelming the overall taste of the stew. This vegetable juice is also viscous enough that it can give your beef stew a thick liquid consistency when combined with broth for some tasty heft.

If you buy bottled V8 Original 100% Vegetable juice for your beef stew, you'll need to refrigerate it after opening the bottle if you don't use it all up. You'll also need to use that juice within 14 days. However, if you don't want to take up space in your refrigerator with that bottle or waste leftover V8 juice, you should buy it in cans. One can of V8 juice, which measures 11½ ounces, is actually all you'll need for a beef stew recipe.

When you set out to make a slow cooker beef stew – which will result in incredibly tender meat — assemble all of the ingredients that you'll mix for your stew, including your 11½ ounce can of V8 Juice. Mix all of the ingredients in your slow cooker and let the mixture cook for seven or eight hours. Your meat will be deliciously soft, and it will float in a thick liquid pool with rich vegetable flavor. But this isn't the only benefit of mixing V8 juice into your beef stew.

It's great that V8 Juice will make your beef stew even more delectable. But what makes incorporating this vegetable juice into your beef stew even better is the nutrients that it will infuse into your dish. One bottle of V8's Original 100% Vegetable Juice contains 180 micrograms of vitamin A and 72 milligrams of vitamin C.

If you mix an 11½ ounce can of V8's Original 100% Vegetable Juice into your beef stew, it will be boosted with 260 micrograms of vitamin A, 680 milligrams of potassium, and 100 milligrams of vitamin C. Vitamin A and vitamin C are antioxidants, which can help protect your body from dangerous free radicals that can harm your body if you get too many in your system. Free radicals are connected to various illnesses, including heart disease and cancer. V8 Juice can definitely level up your beef stew. But, if V8 juice doesn't grab you, there are all kinds of other ingredients that will take your beef stew to the next level, including a dash of chili sauce.