Cooking With Beer 1 : Beef & Stout Stew.

I rarely actually cook with beer, usually I'll just cook and amazing meal(modest aren't I?) and pair it with beer.

Since this time next next week I'll have moved house, I'm trying to get rid of some of my beer collection. Now I've had a Bear Republic Big Bear Black Stout in the collection for a while and thought a hearty beef stew to tuck into mid painting & decorating would be amazing.

We used the Heather Whinney Slow Cook Book for the recipe. See page 142 for the details. Now since there's only me and Mrs Rabidbarfly to eat it we basically halved everything. But I did take off the anchovies(only meant to go on Pizzas, Heather!) and swapped the 250ml of red wine for 250ml of the Stout, then I added Parsnips - bit Carborific but fuck it, it's my stew!

Ingredients go into the slow cooker

As you can see, it looked amazing and frankly it smelt pretty damn good too. Time to leave it though and go do more painting.

8 Hours Later

We get home after a day of hardcore decorating and are aching and ravenous. We add the greens, have a small taste, add a bit more salt and I pour the rest of the stout into two glasses. The piping hot stew goes into two bowls and we're set!

The stew is slightly bitter, we're not sure if the beef was cooked too much or the stout gave it added bitterness. It's not unpleasant, just unexpected. I think the red wine may have sweetened it a bit more but we weren't complaining and it's a recipe we'll use again!

I almost go for seconds but decide against it, lunch tomorrow instead.