recipe

Guinness Braised Beef Stew

February 27, 2013 By Jo-Anna 4 Comments

Now you may have seen this recipe before, so I apologize if that’s the case! But there are some recipes that I feel deserve a second chance in the spotlight. This is one of them! And the timing is perfect for dinner planning for St. Patrick’s Day!

Plus, for whatever reason, I kind of feel like this recipe was under-appreciated!

But it’s ah-ma-zing!

It’s hearty, rich and full of beef flavour!
Sop up the gravy with mashed potatoes or popovers and you have the most amazing dinner!

Yum.

Guinness Braised Beef. Just say that out loud. Guinness. Braised. Beef. Oh yah.
Tender, delicious beef in a hearty gravy. Heaven on Earth!

This dish is perfection to serve for St. Patty’s.

It combines two of my favourite things: beef and beer.
Yes I like beer. I am not ashamed. ;)

Guinness Braised Beef

Ingredients

4½ lb top sirloin beef roast, trimmed and cubed
4-5 tbsp flour
cooking oil
4-5 garlic cloves, minced
2 large onions, chopped
2½ cups beef stock
1¼ cups Guinness beer
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
3 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp prepared mustard
¼ to ½ tsp ground cloves
salt
pepper
1½ tsp basil
2 bay leaves

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.
Heat about 2 tbsp cooking oil in a frying pan (medium to high heat)
Dredge your cubed beef in flour. When the oil is hot, add the beef to the frying pan, and brown on all sides. Don’t overcrowd the beef, so you may have to cook it in batches (and you may have to add more oil). Also be careful not to overcook it, you just want to brown the beef!
When the beef is browned, put it into an oven proof dish.
In the same pan that you browned the beef, add the onions and garlic, and cook until soft. Don’t worry about the messy pan, you want all that stuff in there – it adds great flavour!
Once the onions and garlic are soft, add the stock, beer, vinegar, sugar, mustard, cloves, salt & pepper, basil and bay leaves. Bring to a boil.
Then pour the liquid over the beef, cover, and transfer the dish to the oven.
Bake until the beef is tender – about 1 to 1½ hours. Stir a couple of times during cooking.

Recipe from the haggis and the herring

Tips!

If you find that your gravy is too thin, and would like to thicken it up, I like to mix in 1-2 tbsp of kneaded butter. Kneaded butter is equal parts flour and butter, mixed into a paste. This is a trick I learned from the Joy of Cooking. Don’t add too much or your gravy will taste of flour.
This stew is delicious with mashed potatoes or my yummy popovers! We prefer popovers like the ones pictured below! Yum!
And for dessert, serve it with my Stout Chocolate Cake!

Have a delicious day!

Sharing at 36th Avenue, Delightful Order, The Frugal Girls, Design Dining & Diapers, Whipperberry, Little Inspiration, Funky Junk Interiors

Filed Under: In The Kitchen, What's For Dinner Tagged With: beef stew, Guinness beef stew, Guinness braised beef, Guinness stew, recipe, St. Patrick's Day dinner

Loaded Potato Crisps

February 25, 2013 By Jo-Anna 9 Comments

Potatoes.
So underrated. Unappreciated. Treated the same way all the time. Boiled, mashed, baked.
But they’re so versatile and can be made delicious in so many ways!

Like loaded for example.
Crispy, crunchy, cheesy and loaded like a baked potato. A party in your mouth!

This is such a great way to serve potatoes.
They’re crunchy like french fries, but with the loaded goodness of a baked potato.
Um, how can you go wrong with that combo?

You just can’t. Trust me.
These bites don’t last long. They’re really that good!
Plus, I love that they are great as a side dish to your dinner, or you can serve them on their own as an appetizer!

Loaded Potato Crisps

Serves: 4

Ingredients

3 – 4 potatoes, basically 1 per person (I find red potatoes work the best)
3 tbsp butter
salt & fresh ground pepper
½ cup grated cheese (cheddar or marble work great)
sour cream
3 green onions, minced

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
Prepare a baking sheet: line it with a piece of tin foil, then generously butter the foil with about 1 tbsp of cold butter. (Trust me, you need to butter it…that way the potatoes won’t stick and will come off easily.)
Leave your potatoes unpeeled, then slice them into ½ inch pieces.
Lay them out on your baking sheet.
Melt the remaining butter (about 2 tbsp), then generously brush the top of each potato slice with the butter.
Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until the bottom of the crisp is golden brown. See notes.
Then flip them over and bake for 10 more minutes.
After this time, remove the pan from the oven, then evenly sprinkle the grated cheese on to the tops of each potato crisp.
Put them back in the oven and bake for about 5 more minutes, or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Now it’s time to serve them!

Add a dollop of sour cream and some green onions! Delish!

Notes

Things to note:
- When baking the potato crisps, you will need to watch them…it may take more time for them to become golden brown. We like ours quite golden brown and crunchy, so I let ours go for about 45 minutes.
- You can add crumbled bacon to the finished crisps too! Yum!

Recipe from The Smitten Kitchen

We’ve had these 4 times in the last 3 weeks, they’re just so good, and my kids love them!

I do hope you try them out, if you love potatoes I think you will really really really really like these! ;)
Have a delicious day!

Sharing with Home Stories AtoZ, Tip Junkie, Chef-in-Training, 33 Shades of Green, Design Dining & Diapers, Five Days 5 Ways, It’s Overflowing, Your Homebased Mom

Filed Under: In The Kitchen Tagged With: appetizers, loaded potato crisps, potato crisps, recipe

Stout Chocolate Cake

February 19, 2013 By Jo-Anna 15 Comments

I’ve been wanting to make a chocolate cake with stout in it for as long as I can remember. (I’m a big fan of cooking with wine and beer…I love the flavours they add). So when my friend Clare passed along this recipe, I just knew it was going to be good.

Oh this cake. I can’t say enough good things about it.
It’s such a fun flavour party in your mouth! I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did.

But I do. Oh do I ever.
This cake tastes like chocolate and stout at the same time, and at first I didn’t know what to make of that. But I reminded myself that this wasn’t just a chocolate cake, so it’s not supposed to taste just like chocolate. It’s a chocolate and stout cake. And it works.

SO darn good. And SO perfect for St. Patrick’s Day. Serve it up after some hearty Guinness Braised Beef…you have the perfect green day dinner!

Enough blabbing from me…here’s the recipe! Thanks again Clare!

Stout Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

1 cup Guinness (or any other stout)
1 cup unsalted butter
¾ cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups sugar
⅔ cups sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
2½ tsp baking soda

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Prepare a 9-inch spring-form pan by buttering the inside edges, and lining the bottom with parchment paper.
Pour the stout into a large saucepan over medium heat. Then add the butter and heat until melted.
Remove from heat.
In a separate bowl, combine the cocoa and sugar, then whisk this mixture into the beer and butter.
In another bowl, combine the sour cream, eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth. Then whisk this mixture into the beer/chocolate mixture until fully combined.
In another bowl (you can use the same bowl that you used for the cocoa/sugar mix, that way you get the remnants of the cocoa left there), combine the flour and baking soda.
Add the flour mix to the chocolate mixture, and combine.
Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 50 – 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Put the pan on a rack and let it cool completely before removing the cake from the pan.
Garnish with fresh berries, whipped cream, powdered sugar…use your imagination.