Venison Slow Cooker Stew

A recent Question of the Week on foodtv.ca/blog got me thinking about venison. It's almost hunting season again and I still have a shitload of it in my freezer so it's time to do something about it. I cut up the meat, carrots, celery, onions and garlic and set everything out the night before. I left the potatoes, celery root and squash 'til the morning 'cause I didn't want them to turn colour (I'm not too sure if celery root or squash will turn colour but I didn't want to take the chance.)

Ingredients
6 medium potatoes (Yukon Gold)
4 large carrots
2 medium onions
1 small squash (Sweet Potato Squash)
1 celeriac (celery root)
6 cloves garlic
venison (2 packs chops and 1 pack stew)
salt
pepper
dry rosemary
dry thyme
1 can tomato paste
2 bottles of beer (McAuslin Blonde)
1 large box of beef stock

Directions
1. Peel the carrots, onions, squash (you'll need a friggin' sharp knife here), celeriac and garlic. Leave the skin on the potatoes if they're new). Chop all of the vegetables except the garlic into bite-size pieces. Leave the garlic whole. Put all of the vegetables in the slow cooker. Add salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme.

2. Trim and de-bone the chops and cut into bite-size pieces. Obviously this would have been easier if I had a bunch of pre-cut stew meat, but I didn't. Just the one pack. Add the chopped chops and the stew meat to the slow cooker and add more salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme.

3. Add the tomato paste, beer and stock to the slow cooker, cover and set on low for 10 hours.

Notes
1. This recipe filled a large slow cooker to the rim.

2. It was delicious but I think it would have been better with a bit more venison and a bit less potato. 3 packs (~3lbs) of venison seems like a lot but there's not that much left of the chops once they're trimmed and de-boned.