Some of you guys are natural-born cooks and I just know you can help me by sharing some of your tips for making sure those chunks of deliciousness are near perfect when they're dredged up out of the pot.
I think it was on the Hungarian Goulash episode of Good Eats that Alton Brown took the large chunks of meat and seared them well and cooked them in the pan to done and then set them aside overnight to cool completely. He saved the pan drippings and then the next day did all the other work and added the meat in to the dish. It was then very tender.
I tried doing that with some wild boar that I cut into stew sized and was amazed that it was fall apart tender after the cooling period. I did a big batch and then vacuum packed it into stew/chili batch sized and now just drop it in frozen and I've greatly sped up my stew cook time.
