Slow Cooker Amish Poor Man’s Stew

This Slow Cooker Amish-style poor man’s stew is one of those humble, back-pocket dinners that never lets you down. Raw potatoes on the bottom, crumbled ground beef on top, a can of tomato soup and some broth poured over everything — lid on, walk away. It’s the kind of meat-and-potato meal that fills people up without asking much of you.

Why you’ll love this one

Only 5 ingredients — potatoes, ground beef, onion, condensed tomato soup, and broth. Nothing fancy, nothing you need to run to the store for.
Set it and forget it — everything goes in raw, in layers, with zero browning or pre-cooking required.
Feeds a crowd — hearty and filling enough for six people, and it stretches easily if you add another potato or two.
One pot, easy cleanup — the Slow Cooker does all the work and there’s almost nothing to wash.
Budget-friendly — built around pantry staples and an affordable cut of ground beef, this is real food that doesn’t cost much.

About the ingredients

Russet potatoes. That’s what I use and I’d encourage you to do the same. They hold up in the Slow Cooker better than a lot of people expect — you want to cut them about an inch, maybe a little bigger, because they’ll soften down considerably. I’ve done this with Yukon Golds and they were fine, a little creamier, a little different texture. Red potatoes got a bit mushy for my taste but it was still perfectly edible.
The ground beef — I use 80/85% lean and I will tell you honestly that I have made this with leaner beef and regretted it a little. Some fat is what makes the potatoes taste like something. If you use the leaner stuff, just skim off the top before you stir everything together at the end.
The condensed tomato soup is not negotiable for me. I know that sounds dramatic but it’s the thing that ties this whole dish together. I’ve tried tomato paste diluted with water and it wasn’t the same. There’s something about the sweetness and the thickness of the condensed soup — I use Campbell’s, I’ve always used Campbell’s, I don’t know what else to tell you. If you have a strong preference for something else, go ahead. But don’t come back to me saying it wasn’t quite right.
A medium yellow onion. Chopped up, scattered over the potatoes. Salt and pepper. That’s your whole ingredient list. It’s embarrassingly simple and I mean that as a compliment.

Ingredients

2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and chopped into roughly 1-inch cubes
1 medium yellow onion, chopped (or a few tablespoons of dried minced onion if that’s what you’ve got)
1 teaspoon salt, plus more at the end
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 pound ground beef — 80 or 85% lean
1 can (10.5 ounces) condensed tomato soup
1 cup beef broth, or water with a teaspoon of bouillon dissolved in it

How to make it

You start with the potatoes. Peel and chop them, scatter them across the bottom of your Slow Cooker — I use a six-quart, though a four-quart will work if you don’t pack in extra potatoes. Try to get them in an even layer, or close to it. Don’t drive yourself crazy.
Onions go next, right over the potatoes. I like to use fresh onion because the texture as it cooks down is different from dried, sweeter and softer — but I’ve absolutely used dried minced onion on mornings when I didn’t have the patience for one more thing to chop, and nobody noticed.
Salt and pepper over the top. Just sprinkle it around. I use my fingers. Some of it goes on the potatoes, some on the onion, close enough.
Now the beef. This is the part I find oddly satisfying — you just take the raw ground beef and crumble it with your hands directly into the slow cooker over the vegetables. Break it into small loose pieces. Don’t make meatballs or big chunks. The goal is that it’s distributed, so as it cooks the fat and flavor drip down through the potatoes.
Stir together the condensed tomato soup and the broth in whatever Bowl or measuring cup is handy. It’ll look a little odd and lumpy at first — keep stirring and it’ll smooth out enough. Pour this over everything in the slow cooker. Don’t stir. Just let it settle in. The liquid will find its way down through the layers.
Lid on. Low for seven to eight hours. High for about four. I almost always do low — I start it before I leave for anything and come back to dinner ready.
When it’s done — and you’ll know, the potatoes will be fork-tender and the beef will be cooked through and the whole thing will smell like exactly what it is — take a big spoon and stir it from the bottom up. The potatoes will have absorbed some of the tomato broth and there will be this loose, rusty-colored sauce that coats everything. Taste it. Add salt if it needs it, and it usually does. Let the lid sit off for five or ten minutes so it thickens slightly.
That’s the whole thing.

Variations

Adding one or two carrots, chopped and laid in with the potatoes, is a nice touch — it adds color and a little sweetness. I’ve done it. It’s nice but I don’t always bother.
Stirring in a handful of shredded cheddar at the end makes it something closer to a cheesy hamburger soup, which is its own perfectly good thing, but it does change the character. If you’re serving it to kids who are suspicious of “stew,” the cheese helps.
For a bigger crowd — say you’re feeding more than six — add another potato or two and pour in a little extra broth. The recipe stretches generously.

Leftovers

This keeps well in the refrigerator for three or four days. It thickens overnight as the potatoes keep absorbing the liquid, so when you reheat it, add a splash of water or broth and stir it in. I usually reheat mine in a small saucepan over medium-low because I find the microwave makes the potatoes a little grainy, though honestly on a rushed morning I’ve done it plenty of times and it’s still fine.
I’ve also frozen it. The texture of the potatoes changes a little — they get softer, a bit crumbly — but it’s still perfectly good and nobody at my table ever turned it down.

One last thing

Serve this with buttered bread. White bread, if you have it, soft and plain. Cornbread works wonderfully if you want to make the effort. A simple green salad with a vinegary dressing cuts through the richness nicely. Pickles on the side — I always put pickles on the side, this is non-negotiable in my house, I don’t know when it became a rule but it did.