This comment doesn't make any sense. He didn't say he doesn't like braises, not liking braises doesn't make you "not a foodie", it's ridiculous to question whether someone "is" or "isn't" a foodie when they say they are, and the rice cooker only admits to a couple simple variants on braise applications. If you're making stews without browning your meat first, which you can't do in a rice cooker, you're doing it wrong.
In addition to not making any logical sense, pointlessly sniping at Matt doesn't add anything to the conversation. It would have been easy to disagree with him without doing that.
If you include indonesian dishes (rendang, coconut type curries etc) in your stews category, then browning isn't an essential step. Meat is not browned first in indonesian cooking in my experience, I'm on the fence as to whether that detracts from the taste or not as I've never tried it with browning. I'm not allowed in the kitchen when my wife is cooking!
With western style stews though I think browning is an important step: I did a shin of beef stew in the slow cooker over the weekend in a hurry and it wasn't as good as if I'd have browned the meat first.
I'm a little weak on what the actual definition of a stew is, but rendang is chunks of beef that's cooked for a long time in a little liquid, so I guess that's close enough!
A braise is a slow wet cook of (usually) large pieces of meat (but short ribs are small, as are chicken thighs).
A stew is a braise where the meat is cut smaller, as if for a sautee, and where there is more liquid than meat.
The same cooking process is at play in both: long, low, slow, water-modulated breakdown of collagen into gelatin, with the liquid absorbing flavor and proteins from the meat and also melding all the flavors from all the ingredients, producing either a sauce or a soup in which to serve the meat.
I totally believe there are cultures that don't routinely brown meat before stewing, but they don't include Mexican, French, Italian, Spanish, Indian, Thai, or Chinese. Look up a beef curry recipe in David Thomas' Thai Food book, or a beef tendon stew recipe in a Chinese cookbook, or a lamb curry recipe in an Southern Indian cookbook.
Browning meat in a stew serves the same purpose that the fond serves in a pan sauce in French cooking. The maillard process creates objectively delicious meat flavors, which are then absorbed into the liquid.
You are right, a lot of Asian cuisines rely on other strong flavors like fish sauce, tamarind, seaweed, and fermented pastes. With these you will not miss browning. You know you have learned how to cook Asian food when you can make delicious meat dishes without browning.
I have well-regarded Indian, Thai, and Chinese cookbooks, and they routinely brown meat for braise and stew dishes. I'm curious why browning would ever be a bad thing in a dish that uses tough meat (ie, stew meat).
I absolutely believe you that there are authentic dishes that don't rely on browning for flavor. I'm just curious what they are.
Off the top of my head adobo and many Korean stews like kimchi and pork stew (Dwaejigogi Kimchijjigae). Browning isn't a bad thing, you just don't need it for all dishes.
He didn't say he doesn't like braises, not liking braises doesn't make you "not a foodie", it's ridiculous to question whether someone "is" or "isn't" a foodie when they say they are, and the rice cooker only admits to a couple simple variants on braise applications. If you're making stews without browning your meat first, which you can't do in a rice cooker, you're doing it wrong.
I say this now with as much politeness as I can muster, when it comes to stews, you simply have no idea what you're talking about. And I say this as somebody who's mixed cultural household comes from two very old, very strong stew making cultures with a combined stew making experience in our cultural memory going back somewhere between 5-8 thousand years.
(And I was just about to reply to you with some kind words about your passion for your fancy computer controlled crockpot)
Link to the best stew recipe you can find for a protein that is normally browned that doesn't have, as its first step, browning the protein in a hot pan. Obviously, the first Cooks Illustrated recipe you find will say "the key to a good stew is proper browning of the meat", but then, as someone from a mixed cultural household with a background in stew-making, I'm sure you'd jaundiced about America's Test Kitchen; presumably, you'll scoff at Julia Child too (dry the meat, brown well). When I get home, I'll see what CIA's New Pro Chef says as well and cite it here. I'm guessing: they brown the meat first.
Unfortunately, this is a topic that I do think I know something about.
Boom. It is literally the first step in The New Pro Chef, which is The Textbook at the Culinary Institute of America: brown the protein in a hot pan. Not just for beef stew, but in the master technique description for all stew.
So here's how this is going to go. I'll post some of the thousands of recipes for stews that don't use braising, you'll snark back how they aren't good stews or some such and we'll be at an impasse.
Let's just say that tonight, as a point of fact, I ate a tremendous pork belly and cabbage stew that is never cooked by braising the pork. Tomorrow or over the weekend I'll probably eat a different one, where the protein (pork or beef) can be braised or not to taste -- but typically isn't. On Christmas I know that we'll be eating another bean and pork stew that has no tradition of braising.
The fact that you think stew meat must be braised shows the magnitude by which you simply don't have a clue.
Ready for something that'll blow your mind? Tens of millions of people eat incredible stews every day that don't even have a mammal as the protein!
I think you focus way too much on very specific stew traditions and really need to get away and try some other traditions.
No you aren't. You and I both know very well what braising means. It's different than, but often confused with the technique of "stewing" meat.
But either method can be good techniques for starting many kinds of stews. It's just that there exist in the set of stews, stews for which the protein is not braised or stewed.
A braise is simply a long low slow cook of a protein in the presence of liquid; braised proteins are cooked to break down tough proteins rather than to a precise finished temperature. That's all a braise is.
A stew is a long slow cook of something with a large amount of liquid.
"You think all stew meat must be braised" doesn't even parse.
I feel confident that I've refuted your "you simply don't know what you're talking about" comment upthread, so we don't have to keep talking about this. Again, unfortunately, unlike typography, graphic design, con law, or functional programming, this is not one of the topics I have opinions about that I think I know little about.
Since your thesus was that stews are not possible without braising, and myself and several other helpful HNers have comfortably refuted you, your claim of victory and expertise is....odd to say the least. Enjoy your stew and have a great holiday.
Got a halal butcher near? They might have mutton. I was in the same boat as you until I found out that a muslim butcher a couple of suburbs away sells it. (Actually,it is what we call "two-tooth", hogget, instead of mutton, but better than nothing.)
In addition to not making any logical sense, pointlessly sniping at Matt doesn't add anything to the conversation. It would have been easy to disagree with him without doing that.