Beef and Vegetable Stew with Bacon

The real medicine here is what a long, slow cook pulls out of the beef: glycine and collagen that your gut lining leans on while it repairs itself. The collard greens add their own dose of magnesium on top.

Brown the bacon first and keep the fat in the pan. Every other ingredient gets cooked in it after that, which means nothing about this animal goes to waste, not even the fat rendered out of 2 strips. That is not a small thing, cooked into a pot that feeds you for days.

Batch cooking on a hard week means finding a stretch of time you don't think you have, often 20 minutes in a rushed morning just to brown the beef and bacon before the slow cooker takes it from there. That upfront effort is real, and it buys you 4 or 5 dinners of not having to decide or cook again. On AIP, that kind of built-in rest matters.

Ingredients

• 2 slices bacon
• 2 pounds beef, chopped
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 10 medium carrots, chopped
• 1 fennel bulb, chopped
• 8 cups chopped collard greens
• 5 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 cup nomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon fish sauce (clean-label, AIP-compliant)
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

The source recipe is already built for AIP, with nomato sauce, ground ginger, and fish sauce standing in for the usual non-AIP flavorings. The author lists the reintroduction-phase swaps you could make later if your body tolerates them, tomato sauce in place of the nomato, black pepper or paprika in place of the ginger, and a spoon of sour cream on top. This version keeps the elimination-phase originals. Choose a fish sauce with a clean label and no added sugar or seed-spices.

Method

• Cook the bacon in a skillet until crisp. Lift it out, crumble it, and set it aside. Keep the rendered fat in the pan.
• Brown the chopped beef in the bacon fat, working in batches if the pan is crowded, then transfer it to the slow cooker. Soften the onion in the same fat and add it too.
• Add the carrots, fennel, collard greens, broth, nomato sauce, thyme, fish sauce, salt, and ginger to the slow cooker. Stir, cover, and cook on low about 7 hours, until the beef is tender. Ladle into bowls and top each with the bacon crumbles.

Instant Pot variation

The Instant Pot gives you both paths in one pot. For the same hands-off result, brown the bacon and beef and soften the onion using the Saute function, add the rest of the ingredients, then use the Slow Cook setting on low for about 7 hours. When you are short on time, do the same Saute and browning, then seal and cook on high pressure for about 35 minutes with a 10-minute natural release before venting. Pressure-cook times for stew beef vary with the cut and size of the pieces, so treat that as a range to confirm in your kitchen.

*Adapted from acleanplate.com*