A delicious warming Winter stew. Easy to make and leave in a moderate oven to cook to perfection. The slow cooking helps the meat become tender and just melt in the mouth.
| Beef in ale stew |
Recipe type: main
Author:
Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 3 hours
Total time: 3 hours 30 mins
Serves: 4
A delicious warming Winter stew. Easy to make and leave in a moderate oven to cook to perfection. The slow cooking helps the meat become tender and just melt in the mouth.
Ingredients
- 450g braising steak, cut into 3cm chunks
- 1 large onion, sliced
- 1 leek, sliced
- 1 large carrot, sliced into rounds or strips
- 1 bell pepper, cut into large pieces (about 3cm chunks)
- 1 heaped tablespoon plain flour
- 300g tin of chopped tomatoes
- 500ml bottled ale
- 1 beef stock cube
- 3 bay leaves
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 150 degrees c.
- Put the onion and carrot slices into a pan with a little olive oil and gently cook for several minutes. Add the braising steak and stir in the flour. You don’t need to cook the meat, as it will have plenty of time in the oven.
- Season well with the salt and pepper.
- Add the tomatoes and ale. It will fizz up when you add the ale, so keep stirring.
- Sprinkle on the stock cube, and stir well.
- Put the bay leaves in and transfer the stew to an ovenproof dish with a lid.
- Cook in the oven for 1 hour, then add the pepper and leek, stir well and return to the oven for another hour.
- Take the lid off for the last 30 minutes in the oven.
- Taste the dish, and check all the vegetables are soft and – well, yummy!
- Cook longer if desired.
Notes
A dark beer is best, I like Pedigree, Newcastle Brown is good. However, any real ale you have in the house is fine. The stew pictured above has a bottle of Fusty Ferret in it.
Use any vegetables, just put them into the dish, according to how long they take to cook. I would put soft vegetables (broccoli, peppers) in nearer the end and hard ones (swede, parsnips, carrots) at the beginning.
Serve with hunks of rustic style bread