To be frank? On the advice of my mother, who was a professional chef for many years, when cooking at home it is often best to cheat one's ass off and use things like premade seasoning mixes and stocks/broths.
For this one, I used the Lawrey's beef stew mix(only about 3/4ths of the packet though) and "lower sodium" canned chicken broth. 2 cans of that, about a pound of stew meat that I'd cut into smaller peices, red potatoes, baby carrots and a large sweet yellow onion.
Started the thing off by making eyeballing a thin roux of sorts with basic vegitable oil and bisquick(sp?). Added the meat in to that, along with the seasoning mix and stirred it around to coat the meat with the roux. Let that cook just a bit while I started chopping veggies. Added one can of chicken broth, threw in the potatoes. Waited until I was done chopping the onion to add the second can of broth and the onion and carrots. Let that cook, covered, on just over medium for roughly 40-45 minutes, stirring about 3 times over the course of it. Boom, beef stew.
I'm sure it could still be a whole lot better if I did my seasoning from scratch and such, but on a Taste:Effort ratio, this was pretty damn amazing.
EDIT: Note here. If you use the Lawrey's seasoning, be SURE you also use the low sodium chicken stock. It was still almost too salty for my taste(though Jenna loved it. My salt preferance is very low), so I imagine the Lawrey's seasoning is the culprit there. I normally use the McCormick.
