How to make Beef And Guinness Stew

Step 1: Introduction

The dish I’m going to cook for you now is braised beef in prune juice and Guinness. So, we have our brisket, we have our Knorr Rich Beef, onions, garlic and to garnish, we have the prunes and the bacon. So, we take our onions and just roughly chop. Take the garlic. Just slice quite coarsely. Let’s not forget they’re going to break down in the cooking. Four hours is a long time in the oven. Dash of oil in the pan; add your onions and garlic. Take your brisket.

Step 2: Add the Beef

For my braise, I like to braise in large chunks. Less shrinkage and then, doesn’t it all look nice to have a big chunk of meat on your plate which should be braised beautifully and just break it up? When you’re caramelizing your beef, it’s always nice to have a cast pan iron on a thick base frying pan. It helps with caramelization. I have a kilo of brisket of beef. I’m just going to put it in my pan. Also, while we’re caramelizing the onions and the garlic, we do the same with the beef. Brisket is a very good meat to braise. It really is but I think the problem we will have with braised is we have little, small cuts of meat, very hard to caramelize and it tends to break down. What you want to see is large chunks of beef. Okay, add your beef to the fried onions.

Step 3: Add the Guinness and the Knorr Rich Beef Stock Pot

Now, one bottle of Guinness to begin with and about equal quantity of prune juice, approx 330 ml Guinness and approx 330-350 prune juice and then one Knorr Rich Beef Stock Pot. Heating Guinness is nothing new. People have been doing it for many, many years and so, as I’ve always said, we live in a world refinement with a lot of inventions. But what the prune juice does, it just gives it that nice balance because for me personally, beefing Guinness is just a little bit too strong and by adding the rich beef, it gives you that great richness of flavour which it needs in a stew. And so, as you can see now, before we even start with the real cooking in the oven, we can see the richness within it and so its key is the stock pot. But by bringing things in around it, bringing it all together, it becomes a very delicious meal cooked properly.

Step 4: Finish off

So now, this is ready to go in the oven, 140-150, approx 3 ½ to 4 hours. The beef has been braising for approximately four hours, just short. So by time our beef is ready, the garnish will be complete. So I have two frying pans, one for the prunes, one for the bacon, and a little butter. If you don’t have any butter, then use some oil. It’s simple. I like to put my bacon quite chunky for my add-ons because it’s quite a chunky dish, the beef stew. If it were something a little finer, then I’ll cut them smaller. But I think you’ve got to take in consideration the spice of those pieces of meat and also these are going to shrink down. And with your prunes, the prunes will be put in to cold water, brought to the boil and cooked for 5 minutes, refreshed and drained 5 minutes before we’re serving it with just a little butter. Same with the bacon, cut into chunks, cold water, bring to the boil, drain it, dry it and there’s our beef which is now being cooked into 4 hours. As you can see, that combination of prunes and Guinness and rich beef together, creates the richest of stocks. Now, what we do, let’s put the prunes on and then add our bacon. One thing I’ve never understood, it’s meaning with garnish and there we have our braised beef in Guinness with prunes and with bacon.