A recipe for beef stew from an article in the Guardian, How to Cook the Perfect Beef Stew by Felicity Cloake. It serves 4-6 and takes about 20 minutes to prepare and 3 hours to cook, most of which is unattended.
Ingredients
Stew
- Shin of beef - 800 g
- Flour - 2 tbsp
- Beef dripping, butter or oil - to suit
- Onions - ×2
- Beef stock - 300 ml
- Stout - 300 ml
- Bay leaf - ×1
- Sprigs of thyme - ×3
- Carrots - ×2
- Small turnips - ×2
Dumplings (basic)
You could use any decent dumpling recipe here.
- Plain flour - 100 g
- Baking powder - 1 tsp
- Suet - 50 g
Preparation
- Trim the beef of outer sinew and cut into chunks
- Season the flour with salt and pepper
- Toss the beef in the flour
- Slice the onions
- Peeled the carrots and turnips and cut into chunky slices/pieces
- Prepare the dumplings
- Sifting the flour into a bowl and add the baking powder and suet
- Bring it together into a dry dough with cold water
- Roll 6 balls
Instructions
- Brown the meat in batches in a casserole, adding more fat as required and being careful to avoid burning
- Fry the onions until soft and slightly browned, adding more fat as required
- Add a little stock and deglaze the pan, then add back the beef, stock, stout and herbs and season
- Boil then simmer gently for two hours, partially covered
- Add the carrots and turnips, and simmer for about another hour, until the
meat is tender enough to cut with a spoon
- If you have time and you want to reduce your saturated fat intake then leave to cool and lift the fat off the top
- Add the dumplings to the stew. Partially cover and simmer for 25 minutes
- Season to taste and serve