Guinness Beef Stew (ATK)

• doses: 6-8

Ingredientes

4 pounds boneless beef chuck stew meat (see note)

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 onions, chopped

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1½ cups Guinness Draught (see box)

1 tablespoon light brown sugar

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, chopped

2 bay leaves

5 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks

1 pound parsnips, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks

1 1/2 pounds baby red potatoes, scrubbed

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

Instruções

1. Pat beef dry with paper towels and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat 2 teaspoons oil in large skillet over medium- high heat until just smoking. Cook half of beef until browned on all sides, about 8 minutes. Transfer to slow cooker insert and repeat with additional 2 teaspoons oil and remaining beef.

2. Add remaining 2 teaspoons oil, onions, and ¼ teaspoon salt to skillet and cook until onions are lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add broth, 1 1/4 cups stout, sugar, thyme, chocolate, and bay leaves and bring to boil, using wooden spoon to scrape up browned bits. Transfer to slow cooker insert.

3. Add carrots, parsnips, and potatoes to slow cooker insert. Cover and cook on low until meat is tender, 9 to 10 hours (or cook on high for 6 to 7 hours). Set slow cooker to high. Whisk flour and remaining ¼ cup beer until smooth, then stir mixture into slow cooker. Cook, covered, until sauce thickens, about 15 minutes. Stir in parsley, season with salt and pepper, and discard bay leaf. Serve.

Make Ahead: You can prepare the recipe through step 2 the night before the ingredients go into the slow cooker. Refrigerate the browned beef and the onion mixture in separate containers. In the morning, transfer the beef and the onion mixture to the slow cooker and proceed with step 3.

Notas

Cooking with Guinness can leave a bad taste in your mouth. For beer flavor minus the bitterness, the secrets in the sauce.

Make sure to buy large chunks of stew meat. Trim meat of excess fat, as necessary, and cut into 1½/2-inch pieces. Be gentle when stirring in the flour in step 3-the fork-tender beef will fall apart if stirred too aggressively.

Choosing the Right Beer While shopping for our Guinness Beef Stew recipe, we were surprised to find two options in the beer aisle: Guinness Extra Stout and Guinness Draught. Straight from the bottle, both beers have their merits. But after nine hours in the slow cooker, Guinness Draught was the clear winner. Tasters noticed the "clean, toasted taste" of the stew made with Guinness Draught, while the stew made with Guinness Extra Stout, although still acceptable, was noted for having a slightly "tannic, bitter" aftertaste.

SHOP CAREFULLY When cooking, choose the mellower Guinness Draught (right) rather than Guinness Extra Stout.

low cookers and beef stews are a match made in heaven—their shared mantra of "slow and low" produces succulent meat, fork-tender vegetables, and a rich, beefy broth. But add Guinness to the mix and things quickly go wrong. Instead of imparting its complex, malted aroma to an already satisfying stew, the stout's assertiveness is intensified, leaving the dish bitter and harsh. After making a few preliminary (and disastrous) recipes for Guinness beef stew, 1 decided to scrap them all and start from scratch. When it comes to braising, the test kitchen has always been partial to the chuck cut, from the shoulder of the cow; it's well marbled and has great beefy flavor. I found that searing the meat before adding it to the slow cooker helped balance the strong taste of the stout. To keep with the Irish theme, I included carrots, parsnips, and potatoes (waxy, red skin potatoes hold their shape nicely as they cook) as my vegetables of choice, making sure to cut them into large, rustic pieces so they would absorb lots of flavor without falling apart during the long cooking. When it came to the liquid, tasters preferred the neutral meatiness of chicken broth to stale, slightly metallic beef broth. As for the beer, some recipes

called for the better part of a six-pack, but I found these versions so harsh and bitter that they were nearly inedible. Starting with two bottles, I gradually reduced the amount of beer in each test. But by the time the bitterness was subdued, so was most of the beer flavor. Adding the Guinness in two stages (at the beginning for a base flavor and at the end for a fresh kick) helped, but it wasn't until I used a little culinary trickery that I made real progress. Since stout drinkers often extol the beer's complex coffee/chocolate aroma, I wondered if enhancing these flavors might bolster the perceived stout character of the stew without adding any harshness. I first tested coffee (both instant and fresh-brewed) in the stew, but tasters instantly rejected its distinc- tive taste. For my next test, I added cocoa to the slow cooker, and tasters raved about the improved stout flavor and lack of bitterness. The only downside to the cocoa was its slightly acidic nature, but a quick switch to bittersweet chocolate left me with a beefy stew that was long on flavor and short on bitterness. Chocolate in beef stew—who would have guessed? It must have been the luck of the Irish.

-Jeremy Saver

COOK'S COUNTRY • FEBRUARY/MARCH 2007