I'm documenting the making of an Economic Beef stew. Since we'll all be living on our own soon, I figured it would be a good recipe to have in our pockets.

The ingredients are:
One Package of stewing beef (approx 650-750g)
Beef base 45 ml's
Two medium sized carrots
Six or seven  mushrooms
Half of a medium onion
2-3 cloves of Garlic
Two or three medium russet potatoes
One Tsp. of Soy Sauce
Approx 1/2 cup of flour
1 Tbsp Oil

Ingredients, (Oil absent)

Procedure:
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

Prepare about a liter of stock:
     Pour the stock powder into a bowl, and pour in about half a cup of hot water,
     Whisk quickly to disolve, and then fill with 3 1/2 cups of cold water.
     Set aside.

Liter of Stock

Preparing the stew:
Heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large oven-safe pot on medium temperature
Put half of an onion, diced, into the pot
Let it sautee until the onion is translucent
Add stewed beef uniform size

Approx Meat size

Add either garlic powder (1 Tbsp) or freshly minced or pressed garlic  (2-3 cloves)
Cook until the pieces of meat are all browned.
Add pinches of flour until most of the moisture is absorbed and it looks approximately like this:

Roux plus Beef

Add the prepared stock slowly, stirring gently
Turn heat up to 8 or 9, we want it to come to a boil and reduce
When sufficiently reduced, about like this:

Roux plus stock, after reduction

Add the tsp of soy sauce and stir until it's blended in.
Add the two chopped carrots, the 2-3 diced potatoes and the 6-7 quartered and stemmed mushrooms.
The vegetables look like this when prepared:

Chopped Carrots, potatoes and mushrooms

Turn temperature off and put into heated oven without lid, let cook for 2-3 hours, and when done it will look like this:  

Finished Stew

And that is the making of a delicious, economic beef stew, the total preparation time was: 1 hour prep, 3 hours cooking   serves: 6

The recipe is also scalable, so you can adjust to feed fewer or greater amounts of people. The stew keeps well in the fridge, and like any stew, is better the second day. Serve with chewy buns for the best effect.
The total cost was: 10$, or 1.70$ per serving. And that, is a delicious, economical beef stew.