beef stew – Stuff I Ate

Dinner 2/26/23

March 7, 2023Tagged beef stew, Cooking, Dinner, Guinness, Ireland, Irish stewLeave a comment

Beef and Guinness Irish Stew

Recently, we were at a Whole Foods that sells beer and wine, and I bought a 4-pack of Guinness on a whim. I had a chuck steak in the freezer, so I decided to make some beef and Guinness Irish stew (and, of course, enjoy a glass as well). It’s about as easy as beef stew gets, and it makes a lovely winter meal. I made mashed potatoes to go along with it instead of putting the potatoes in the stew, but I kind of wished I had put them in, because the starch from the cooking potatoes would have helped to thicken up the liquid a bit.

Back in 2007, I went to Ireland for the first time with my two brothers. You can’t avoid this dish in an Irish restaurant or pub, and in a couple of pubs we stopped in it was the only thing you could get to eat. I like this stew, but not every day. The food highlight of that trip turned out to be a Chinese restaurant in the town of Lahinch, just because it was the only non-Irish place we found all week. Best Chinese meal I ever ate.

Lunch 1/4/23

January 9, 2023Tagged beef stew, Cooking, Leftovers, Lunch, New Year's DayLeave a comment

Beef stew

So the first thing I ACTUALLY cooked for 2023 was a pot of beef stew on New Year’s Day. One year I made the traditional black-eyed peas and collard greens for New Year’s Day, and nobody ate it except me, so I haven’t bothered again. The cold snap we had over Christmas had me hankering for all sorts of hot comfort food, even though the weather here for NYD was quite mild.

Stew is always better a day or two later, and this was no exception. I warmed some up for my lunch a couple of days later, and it was delicious. I noticed that The Kitchn did a comparison of beef stews last week, too, and they chose Ina Garten’s recipe as the best one. The recipe I use is very basic, but the next time maybe I will give hers a shot.

Dinner 1/23/22

January 25, 2022Tagged beef stew, braising, DinnerLeave a comment

Beef stew

I got a hankering to make beef stew over the weekend. My wife’s been making stuff in the Instant Pot lately, and my mother always made beef stew in a pressure cooker, too, but I always do beef stew in my trusty Le Creuset Dutch oven. It just feels cozy to set up a big pot of stew on a January Sunday afternoon.

I use a pretty basic recipe. I’ve made Julia Child’s boeuf bourgignon a few times over the years, but I feel like that recipe tries to do too much for a beef stew. I did include some parsnips in this batch. I love parsnips, especially roasted along with some carrots to go with a roast beef or chicken. We had a bag of them in the veg drawer that I wanted to use up, so in they went, along with the usual potatoes and carrots, and some frozen peas as well.

Now that our daughter is back at college for the semester, I am the only one eating this. I liked it well enough on Sunday to go back for seconds, but I anticipate having this as a leftover for dinner tomorrow night as well. Maybe I will make some drop biscuits to go with it, since I kind of wished I had some on Sunday.