I made a beef stew today. The meat is tender, but dry. I browned the meat with onions and leaks before adding canned tomatos and stock, then added other veggies. Did I leave the meat to brown too long?
Make sure to use a decent stewing cut, not too lean (chuck is my favourite), and cook it at a low temperature for several hours. It's more likely that something went wrong on one of these two fronts than that your browning of the meat caused it to be tough.
Still, when browning make sure to get the pan as hot as all hell and do it quickly in batches small enough that the meat doesn't have a chance to cool the pan down to the point where it stops searing - and give the pan a moment to heat up again between batches. You only want to sear the outside, there's no 'cooking' to be done so get it in and get it out fast.
Beef stew is one of those things that you should leave as long as you can at a low heat - if the meat is dry then that suggests it barely made it into the stew before serving.
