Beef and sweet potato broth

In my new stew craze, I've been experimenting with different slow cooker recipes. Here's the one I tried today which altho didn't turn into a stew, became instead, a nice thick broth. Notice I use the word 'broth' rather than 'soup', because that's exactly what it is.

Ingredients

500g stewing beef, cubed

1/4 cup flour

1 tbsp 5 spice powder

1 tbsp dried basil or sage

1 large white onion, finely diced

1 carrot, cubed

1 sweet potato, cubed into smaller chunks (approx 1 inch cubes. This is impt so that they will actually start to 'melt' and provide the thickness to the broth)

2 handfuls barley

1.5l pork bone stock or chicken stock

2 tsbp rice wine (optional)

2 tbsp worchestershire sauce (optional)

1 handful soyabeans (I put this in a bag so that I could fish it out later as I don't really like eating beans but you can always leave it in)

Oil for frying

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1) To the flour, add the basil or sage, 5 spice powder and salt and pepper. Mix well. Coat the beef cubes evenly.

2) Add oil to a pan and brown the beef cubes taking care not to crowd the pan. Do a batch at a time until nicely browned on all sides. Remove and drain.

3) Add more oil to the pan and add in the onion, carrots and sweet potato. Briefly fry until onion softens.

4) Pour the vegetable mix into a slow cooker, together with the beef. Add the soyabeans, barley and stock. Pour in the remaining flour used to coat the beef.

5) Once the broth comes to a boil, skim off the foam and any floating oil. Leave to slow cook for at least 2 hours.

6) After 2 hours, pour in the rice wine and worchestershire sauce. It is ready to be served after another 10 minutes of simmering. At this point, check for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed.

7) Leave it to simmer for up to 4 hours so that the beef becomes really tender, and the sweet potatoes and barley melt to produce a thicker gruel. It can also be cooled down and kept in the fridge after the initial 2 hours, and reheated the next day after skimming off the fat. This leaves time for the tastes to infuse overnight.