How to Eat Less Meat

A vegetable recipe with a little beef

Photo: Mark Bittman

When it comes to eating, many of us like to start the year off on whatever we consider to be the “right foot.” For me, the “right foot” means cooking dishes where animal products recede into the background while plants take center stage. Not just in January, but always.

It’s a style that presents infinite opportunities. Finding myself with a pound of stew beef and a pantry full of (mostly) root vegetables, I decided to put the pressure cooker to work and produce a beef-and-root-vegetable stew that would stretch that pound of meat to serve 10 or 12 rather than three or four. We’ll eat it for days.

This recipe is a model, a guide. You can follow it precisely, and I can tell you it’s wonderful. But you can also use it as a template with room to improvise. And don’t worry if you don’t have a pressure cooker; all of this can be done (in the same way, and in the same order) in a regular pot or Dutch oven; the cooking times will just be longer.

Bit o’Beef Stew with Vegetables

Makes: At least 8 servings
Time: About 2 hours, with the pressure cooker

1. Take a handful, half or ¾ cup, of white beans and cook in twice as much water in the pressure cooker for a half-hour at high pressure…