Beef and Guinness Stew

Happy 2013!

Somehow, and don't ask me how, I'm still behind.  By like two weeks.  I blame the holidays.  Not like January is going to help that situation much . . . Oh well.  Someday I will really catch up.

Anyhow, the week before Christmas was the first week of my break!  Which meant it was full of cleaning, wrapping, baking, and, well, cooking!  And even cooking other than pizza!  Gasp!  You have to understand that making pizza and calzones has kind of become my thing over the last month or so.  I guess that's what happens when you come upon a not-so-secret secret recipe for making the crusty part taste like Olive Garden breadsticks.  I keep telling NES how, but somehow the pizza making is always my duty, at least for now.

But, yes!  Cooking!  See, for our wedding, I got two dutch ovens.  One is pretty big, the other is smallish.  Since the day I got the bigger one, I've been planning on making this beef and Guinness stew.  But somehow summer just doesn't seem like the right time for it.  Call me crazy, but I don't associate beef stew and summer.

So, I got up in the morning, and I got all the ingredients ready.

I even browned the beef and put the whole stew together.

And then I re-read the recipe.  The three and four hours I read overlapped, they didn't accumulate.  So, well, it was about three hours before I really needed to start.  Oops.  Reading carefully is always a good idea.  Seriously.

But all over the place, the recipe said it was better a day later.  I didn't have the time to wait to eat it the next night, so I decided I'd just make it 3 hours early and let it sit that long.  NES and I didn't really notice a difference between the day of and the next day.

And that was my adventure with my new dutch oven.  Except I ended up only using the smaller one.  Maybe when we have visitors, I'll make more in the bigger one!

Beef and Guinness Stew

adapted from The Alchemist

2 pounds of beef chuck, cut into 1 inch pieces, with fat trimmed off

1 bottle of Guinness 

4 cups of beef broth

1 cup carrots, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

1 1/2 bay leaves

fresh thyme and rosemary

salt and pepper

flour (for dregdging)

oil

3 cups potatoes, cubed

1 tbsp. cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.  Cover all sides of the meat in salt and pepper.  After pouring some flour into a low bowl, dredge the meat in the flour.  In a dutch oven (I used 4 qt), heat oil over medium heat.  In batches, place the dredged cubes of meat into the pan.  Brown the meat on all sides (it doesn't need to be cooked through).  Repeat until all cubes are browned.

Remove the pan from the heat, and add a little of the broth, scraping the bottom and sides to remove the brown residue.   

Add the remaining broth, meat, carrots, onions, Guinness, bay leaves and herbs to the dutch oven.  Cover and cook at 300 degrees for 3 hours.  

After 3 hours, add the cubed potatoes and continue cooking for another hour.  

After a total of 4 hours, remove from the heat, and let cool.  Scrape off any fat that rises to the surface.  

Reheat over medium heat, and test for seasoning.  To thicken, add  the cornstarch to 2 Tbsp. of cold water, and stir till combined.  Add to the stew and bring to a boil.