Irish stew.

Irish stew is like any kind of stew a little hard to pin down as a complete recipe. I have seen them with red wine and Guinness, olive oil and well all sorts of things. No I would say that to make a good Irish stew you need good Irish ingredients and for this I have chose the Irish red ale.  I have gone for beef in this recipe but you could use lamb if you like.  Now if you can get Irish beef all the better.

You will need

1½kg/3lb 5oz stewing beef, cut into cubes

50g/2oz butter

50g/1¾oz flour

175g/6oz streaky bacon

12 baby onions

18 button mushrooms

12 baby carrots

1 tbsp chopped thyme

2 tbsp chopped parsley

2 cloves of garlic

425ml/15fl oz Irish red ale

425ml/15fl oz chicken or beef stock

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Take the beef and put it in a bag with the flour, shake this around so that the beef is completely covered in flour. Now you need a frying pan at first to fry every thing off then add it all in to a large saucepan to cook really slowly over a good to or three hours.

Slice the starkly bacon up and put this into a hot frying pan, let it cook down and release some of the fat then add the butter.  Once the butter has melted, add the beef and fry that until this is nice and brown.  The darker you get it the better the colure of your stew. Once this is done add it to the saucepan.  Then add the stock and bring it to the boil.  Then simmer until the meat is starting to go tender. Keep an eye on this and add some more water if you think it is going to dry.

Once the meat is starting to go tender, add the onions pealed, mushrooms whole, carrots scrubbed, the thyme and garlic crushed.  Then add half the beer and let this cook until the meat is fully cooked.

Finally season with salt and pepper and add the rest of the beer, and then take it off the heat.  Now really you want to let this stand for a bit to get the full flavours of the rest of beer work in to the dish.  Ideal leave it over night.  Then reheat and finish with fresh chopped parsley. Now all you need is Champ to serve with it , I will do that recipes tomorrow.