St. Patrick's Day Food - Irish Stew

St. Patrick's Day Food - Irish Stew, to celebrate with the grandkids, was the inspiration for this post. My first thought, for whatever reason, was Irish stew. I've never had it and never made it. So, I did a little research on Pinterest, of course.

The recipe I found had a key Irish ingredient in it, namely, Guinness stout beer. Overall the ingredients for the stew sounded pretty good but I noticed in the comments that people had to cook the stew for two hours and the beef was still kind of tough.

On another site, the people were saying they cooked their stew for four, six, and eight hours! That is insane! Some offered up suggestions to how to tenderize the meat from pressure cooking to laying it on onions! I am not sure what that does exactly, but if you use these recipes, the total cooking time will be 1-hour and the meat will be fork tender.

Several people said they couldn't thicken the stew. The flavor was good but it was too liquid.

That gave me the idea to use the basic technique for the beef stew I regularly make but change several of the ingredients to make it more Irish. The family loves the beef stew recipe I have used for over forty-five years. Each of the kids has copied it for their own recipe arsenal.

My expectation was that I might run into a little dissension. I ran this by Dave. Well, let's just say he was not really on board but, undaunted, my plan went forward.

So, I knew if flour was used to dredge the meat in before browning it on all sides, the flour would thicken the stew. The flour would also seal in moisture keeping the meat from being tough. It also helps to brown the meat. You do want a hot pan and I add extra olive oil, as needed, to keep it from burning.

A few things, which will make it easier on you and assure success, is to have all of the meat ready and dredged in the flour before turning on the heat. Have the tomato can open, the garlic minced, and the onions chopped. Have the beer and the wine opened and ready to measure.

Adding tomatoes instead of just tomato paste, like in some of these recipes, during the first stage of cooking, would also help to tenderize the beef pieces. The acid in the tomatoes helps break down the fibers in the meat and tenderize it.

I also cut down on the liquids in the stew. Isn't that a no-brainer? You want a thicker broth, cut back on the liquids. More beef was added, too. We are meat eaters here.

So, there you go. If you consistently have tough beef try either of these two recipes. Although, this recipe called for Guinness Stout beer, nobody here drinks that beer so I substituted the beer we had on hand. I don't drink beer but I did have a glass of the Cabernet with the stew and it was pretty fine.

Anyway, this was the resulting recipe and it was definitely a hit. Note that the total cooking time is one hour!

I tasted the broth after adding everything but the vegetables. Oh, my! I knew this was going to be good!

Irish Stew

2 lbs. beef stewing meat (or chuck roast)

1/2 cup flour

olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

6 large garlic cloves, minced

1 - 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes

3 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

1 cup Beer

1 cup Cabernet Sauvignon

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 Tblsp. Worcestershire

2 bay leaves

2 cups of carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2" pieces

5 cups of baby potatoes*, cut in half or quartered (You want the pieces about the same size.)

Chopped fresh parsley

**Cut beef into 1" - 2" pieces. Dust lightly with flour.

Heat oil in a dutch oven. (When the meat is added, you want that sizzle.) Add beef gradually and brown on all sides, remove to a plate or platter. (Don't overcrowd the pan, you won't brown the meat, you'll be steaming it! Brown it in batches.)

Saute onions in drippings, (add more olive oil if needed,) until soft.

Add the minced garlic and saute just until you smell the garlic.

Add the browned beef back to the pan, the can of tomatoes, beer, wine, thyme, Worcestershire, bay leaves, salt, and pepper.

Bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer for 35 minutes.

Add the carrots and potatoes. Bring back to a boil. Cover the pan and turn down to simmer for 25 minutes more.

Serve in bowls and sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley.

* I love these baby potatoes and buy a big bag of them from Sam's Club. They don't need to be peeled and we get the extra vitamins in the peel. You can substitute whatever kind of potatoes you have.

** If you buy stewing beef at Sam's Club, the pieces are usually made up of pieces of steak and roast. It is good quality.

Since I didn't use the Guinness, maybe this wasn't so Irish, but did I ever get accolades from the family? The girls actually said they thought they might even like this recipe better!