‘Eyeball Stew’ - bacon

Method

• Fry the bacon over medium heat until done and semi-crisp. Remove it from the pan, reserving the fat. Place the bacon in a large pot. Take some of the bacon fat out of the pan and reserve it.
• Saute the mushrooms a little in the remaining fat, and once they are softened and the liquid has cooked out a bit, remove them from the fry pan and add to the pot with the bacon.
• Brown the beef stew meat in the reserved bacon fat, a little at a time. You want a nice brown to the meat, and by adding a little of the meat to the pan at a time you can do this. Crowding the pot will result in grey looking meat. As the meat browns, add it to the pot with the bacon and mushrooms. Repeat with all of the stew meat.
• Cut up the whole onion and add it to the pot as well and cook until softened. Add the onion, the thyme sprigs, the water and Au Jus mix or the beef stock. Cover and let simmer for at least 3 hours until the meat is tender.
• In the last half hour of cooking time, add the peeled pearl onions. Cutting a little cross in the stem end of the onions, will help to keep them whole. The onion that you added earlier will have cooked out and become part of the gravy.
• When the meat is tender and the pearl onions softened, thicken the sauce with a slurry made of 2 Tablespoons of flour and a half cup of water. Stir in the slurry and continue to heat until sauce is thickened.
• Serve with rice (for Halloween you can call the rice "Lice" if you like. This can also be served with wide buttered noodles (Intestines?) or potatoes. Or just have some nice crusty bread available for dipping.
• You can also throw this in the crockpot for about 5 hours or so on low heat.