Retro Recipe: Creamy Beef with Chive Biscuits

Isn’t it funny how comfort food has just as much to do with memory as it does with taste buds? Beef stew, for instance, will forever and always remind me of childhood ski trips with my dad in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After long days in the cold and snow, my brother, dad and I would regroup at our rental cabin to feast on Pop’s specialty: canned beef stew with a side of biscuits.

In search of a scratch-made version of this wintertime classic, I stumbled upon this recipe for Creamy Beef with Chive Biscuits. Found in the Hearty and Homestyle chapter of Betty Crocker’s 1965 Dinner in a Dish cookbook, this one-pot meal is exactly that. With big chunks of tender beef in vegetable-laden tomato gravy, I make this stew at least once a winter, whenever I’m hungry for something warm and comforting that doesn’t take a lot of effort.

With a start-to-finish time of two-and-a-half hours, it’s an ideal meal for lazy weekends when you can let it simmer away on the stove, stirring every so often. I’ve also had great success freezing the stew portion (sans biscuits) and reheating it in the oven on a busy week night. (Here are some great tips for reheating frozen casseroles.) You can use refrigerated biscuits if you’d like, but I’d recommend trying it first with the chive biscuits. They are so easy to make and add a really homey finishing touch.

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