Freda Forsythe, Henderson

Freda’s Chuck Roast Vegetable Beef Stew Recipe

Freda Forsythe remembers when her late mother would call all six of her grown daughters and their families and invite them over for a beef stew dinner.

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“Mom would always say, ‘It’s the best I’ve made yet,’” recalls Forsythe. “The aroma was so good when you walked in her house. She always made enough to send each of us girls home with a quart of beef stew.”

When Forsythe’s mother died in 1996, she and her five sisters divided up their mother’s cookbook collection.

“Mother probably had 30 or 40 cookbooks when she passed away, and she had more than 40 spices in her cabinet,” Forsythe says. “I found this recipe, and I’ve been making it for about five years.”

Like her mother, Forsythe cooks the stew in a cast iron pot and adds a unique combination of seasonings.

“The allspice gives it a really good smell and flavor,” she says.

One of the tricks to Forsythe’s recipe is to brown the pieces of beef in a pot before adding all the other ingredients.

“It locks in the tenderness and flavor so the beef melts in your mouth,” Forsythe says.

She serves the stew with garlic toast, rolls or cornbread.

“I have four boys and four grandsons, and the whole family loves it,” she says. “They say I can experiment on them any time.”

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