My family enjoyed this. I followed the review of Arizona Desert Flower (thank you!) and made slight modifications. I did not brown my beef or sauté the onions (I didn't have the time nor do I really think it's necessary, in my opinion). I cut my beef tips (or stew beef) into very small bite-size pieces and threw them in the crockpot. I chopped a sweet onion and added it to the crockpot as well as three (3) 6-oz cans of mushrooms (would've preferred fresh, but canned was all I had on hand). Used 1 cup of warm water and added a 30% less sodium packet of brown gravy mix to it. To that mixture I added 1 cup of red cooking wine, the tablespoon of minced garlic, 2 T of worcestershire sauce and 2 T of low-sodium soy sauce. Combined it all thoroughly and poured it over the beef tips, onions and mushrooms (no need to mix). Added a small amount of freshly ground pepper and freshly ground sea salt to the top. I let it cook on low all day (9 hours). Just before serving, I used a sauce pan to make a roux of melted butter, flour and a bit of cornstartch to serve as a thickening agent. Added it to the crockpot, gave it a quick stir and let it rest another 15 minutes or so. I served this over egg noodles with Brussels sprouts. Thank you for sharing the recipe!

I did this in the crockpot, so I only added 1 cup of water plus the cup of wine. Hooray for a no 'cream of yuck' soup recipe! I wanted our sauce thick (that doesn't happen in the crockpot) and I added a nice flour/cornstarch/butter mixture over medium heat, and then put it back in the crockpot to keep warm and get the starch taste out. I also added about 6 ounces of mushrooms, just because I had them. Only used 2 tbsp each of worchestershire sauce and soy sauce. Omitted salt and only used 3/4 tsp total of pepper. I figured with the gravy mixture there would be salt enough without a full 1/2 cup of sodium filled soy and worchestershire. As for wine...I used a nice tempranillo. Definitely something we will enjoy around here more often!