Not Healthy: Guinness Beef Stew Recipe

With the cold months arriving it is a great time for getting soup and stew recipes together for warm winter meals. I am typically not a big fan of beef stews because too many suffer from goopy textures and bland flavors. One way to pack flavor into a beef stew is to add a rich and flavorful beer. Dark beers, like stouts and porters, tend to work very well because they add dimension with roast, chocolate, caramel and molasses that reduce down and integrate with the beef and vegetable to add richness without adding sweetness. (Think about it like coffee-crusted steak rather than pouring maple syrup on a steak.) This recipe is reasonably healthy while hearty. It has a thicker consistency that you want in a stew but without the goopy texture I despise. This recipe is an adaptation of a recipe from an issue of Draft magazine provided by the recipe at Restaurant Six89 in Carbondale, Colorado. (However, I found the original recipe sort of bland.)


Selecting the right beer for this stew matters although it does not have to be a Guinness stout. Guinness has long had an incredibly effective marketing campaign that has made the brand ubiquitous even before craft beer became something serious in America. It was the dark beer thanks to its marketing. Its marketing reaches into food and you can easily find Guinness in all sorts of recipes. Aside from the marketing, Guinness works in many dishes as a great beer. The reason Guinness works so well is that it is not overwhelming in flavor and it is more acidic than many other stouts. When you reduce Guinness you can bring the flavor out while still using the acidity to balance the roasty and chocolate flavors. It works more like red wine reduction than a sweeter or maltier beer. So no matter how much of a beer snob you might be, Guinness is a really effective beer for cooking.

However, there are other good options. Other stouts or porters will work well, along with other dark beers like bocks, marzens/Oktoberfests or brown ales. When working with these less acidic beers you need to account for the lack of acidity and keep some malt vinegar on hand to adjust the acidity of the stew and brighten it up. Taste the stew about an hour before serving to see if it needs some punch to it. If it does, add a 1/2 a tablespoon of malt vinegar, stir and let it integrate into the stew for the next hour. You don't want to taste the vinegar, just get the acidity. Taste again and if it needs more add another 1/2 tablespoon and cook for another thirty minutes. Repeat if necessary.

There are also lots of beers to avoid. Avoid beers with unusual ingredients like vanilla or cherries. Be careful about adding hoppy beers because the hop character can reduce down to an unpleasant bitterness. Personally if I used a beer with hop flavor I would stick with something herbal or piney so it tastes more like an herb addition than some of the fruity hops that would give you a weird fruit flavor in a beef stew.

Picking the right beef is also important. You can usually buy stew beef at the store fairly cheaply. They tend to be tougher meat that breaks down over a long cook and the collagen that makes it chewy when fried or grilled is released into the liquid and helps give the stew body. I prefer to use leaner round or eye roasts over chuck. I find the combination of flour plus excess fat in the stew creates that goopy texture I dislike so much. You want a little fat for flavor.

Feel free to play with the herbs and vegetables. I really like potato in my soups and stews but you can leave it out or substitute other starchy ingredients like barley, wheat, rye, lentils, rice, etc. Avoid anything that breaks down too easily when stewed. The biggest offender here is russet potatoes. They are great for baked potatoes or mashed potatoes but when you stew them for hours they fall apart into an unpleasant grainy texture. Go with white, gold, or red potatoes. Some people like tomato in their beef stew. If you use tomato then you may have enough acidity if you do not use Guinness to not need to add vinegar. I use frozen peas and pearl onions for ease and availability but if you want to mess around with peeling pearl onions then be my guest.

This recipe is relatively healthy but I marked it as "Not Healthy" for the flour and beer, which add carbs that you may not want to consume on a clean diet. You could always clean the stew up in to more of a beef soup by omitting these ingredients but then it wouldn't be a stew recipe. 

Guinness Beef Stew Recipe

Serves 4
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 8 hours

Equipment:

• Dutch oven or crock pot
• Frying pan (if not using dutch oven)
• Stove
• Kitchen utensils, measuring cups and spoons
• Mixing bowl
• Knife and cutting board

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. cubed beef stew
• 16oz. low sodium beef broth
• 1 bottle Guinness or other suitable beer
• 2 stalks celery
• 2 carrots
• 2 cups pearl onions (peeled if bought fresh)
• 1 1/2 cups green peas
• 2 white or golden potatoes (not russet potatoes)
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 1/2 tbsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tbsp dried rosemary
• Malt vinegar (if not using Guinness)
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Chop carrots and celery into 1/2 inch pieces. Chop potato into 1 inch cubes (does not have to be perfect). If your beef is not already cubed then do that now.
2. Mix beef, flour and 1/2 tsp each of salt and pepper in a bowl. Make sure beef is fully coated.
3. If you are using a dutch oven instead of a crock pot then add the vegetable oil and heat over medium-high heat. If using a crockpot, do the same in your frying pan. Once the oil starts to smoke, reduce the heat to medium and add the beef, shaking off excess flour before adding. 
4. Brown the beef on all sides. 
5. Once the beef is browned, add the bottle of beer. Mix thoroughly and gently scrape up any bits of beef or flour stuck to the bottom of the dutch oven or frying pan. Simmer for 1 minute.
6. If you are using a crock pot, then add the contents of the frying pan to the crock pot. If you are using the dutch oven, treat the following steps as though it says "dutch oven" when it says "crock pot". 
7. Add the beef broth, celery, carrots, pearl onions, potato, 1 tbsp dried thyme, 1/2 tsp salt and 1 tsp black pepper to the crock pot. Turn the heat to low on the crock pot. (For dutch ovens, turn the heat down on the stove to keep the stew simmering.)
8. Cook for seven hours. (Taste and see if you need to add malt vinegar as explained above.) Add 1/2 tbsp dried thyme, 1/2 tbsp dried rosemary and peas. Mix thoroughly. Cook for an additional hour (or more if desired). 
9. Taste and add additional salt and pepper if necessary. Serve.