Beef and Guinness stew
Dark, rich, tasty and comforting- perfect Autumn/Winter comfort food!
15 mins
3 hours
312 kcal
15 mins
3 hours
312 kcal
SERVES
4
DIFFICULTY
EASY
SERVES
4
Difficulty
EASY
There’s little that can get me more excited than a proper plate of beef and Guinness stew! There’s just something about it- it’s the perfect comfort food as far as I am concerned. Now for me, following Slimming World, it really is worth using those few syns up to cook this in the Guinness, as it makes such a gorgeous meal, but if you wanted to keep it syn free you could cook it just with beef stock, or with the fabulous red-wine stock pots that you can get from Tesco.
Allowing a long cooking time for this sort of beef stew is essential, as the cheaper cuts of beef need to cook longer so that they are tender- nothing worse than a chewy old chunk of beef in a stew (or overly fatty for that matter!) and I’ve experienced many bad ones in pubs that clearly haven’t allowed a long enough cooking time. In fact, I’m yet to find a pub where I’ve had a really good one- it’s like an eternal quest for me (generally looking for a good steak pie!).
Again, you could miss out the cornflour, but I much prefer a thick sauce and personally I think it’s essential.
Guinness Original is 9 syns for 500ml.
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Beef and Guinness stew
Ingredients
- 500 g lean casserole steak/stewing steak
- 2 red onions finely chopped
- 3 sticks celery finely chopped
- 3 carrots chopped into small chunks
- 2 cloves garlic crushed
- 250 g chestnut mushrooms finely chopped
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- 3 tbsp tomato puree
- 500 ml Guinness
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 300 ml beef stock
- salt and pepper
- low calorie cooking spray/spray oil
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 160c
- Fry the onions in spray oil/cooking spray until softened, then add the celery & garlic and stir fry for a couple more minutes.
- Add the beef (having removed any visible fat) and fry gently until slightly browned on the outside
- Add in the cornflour, and stir through to coat the beef.
- Pour in the Guinness and bring to a simmer.
- Add the tomato puree, soy sauce, carrot, mushrooms, thyme, bay leaves. Season with salt and pepper.
- Bring up to a fast simmer, and stir everything together well.
- Transfer to a casserole dish, and add about 300ml beef stock.
- Pop into oven and cook for 3 hours. Have a peek after 2 hours, and add more beef stock if it's starting to look like it's drying out.
