Slow Cooked Beef and Guinness Stew

I’ve had a lot of chat today of stews and soups and basically anything slow cooked, rich, delicious and juicy. As I do with any food talk I get involved in I got rather carried away, started printing out recipes and managed to convince a work colleague to go out on her lunch and buy a cast iron pot – to say I dragged her there, picked out the pan and carried it back to her car wouldn’t actually be too great of an exaggeration! So I figured this beef and Guinness stew was quite fitting for today’s recipe; even if you haven’t been bored to death about how great these pots are you can still appreciate the greatness of a hearty stew – especially one which is full of tender beef, lots of veggies and a good glug of Guinness. They say Guinness is a meal in a pint but this recipe gives you much more than that.

Serves 4-6 (depending on how much mash you chose to have with it)

• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 white onions – roughly chopped
• 2 parsnips – peeled cored and chopped into rough 1cm pieces
• 2 carrots – peeled and sliced
• 400g steak (chose some relatively cheap cuts) – cubed
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 500ml Guinness
• 2 bay leaves
• Punch sugar
• Good twist black pepper
• 400ml tin chopped tomatoes
• ½ tsp finely chopped rosemary
• 1 beef stock cube
• 1 tsp marmite

Preheat the oven to 150’C

In a large casserole dish or oven proof saucepan heat the oil and fry the beef until browned

Remove the beef from the pan and fry the onions until soft.

Add the vegetables and cook for a further 5 minutes before stirring in the flour and the beef

Make sure the veg is well coated with the flour before adding a splash of the Guinness.

Give the mixture a good stir, making sure there are no lumps from the flour and then add the remaining ingredients to the pan.

Bring the mixture to the boil before covering and cooking in the oven for at least 2 hours – the longer it cooks for the tastier it will be.

Serve with a mountain of mash potato and enjoy 😀

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