2 Hearty Winter Stews

This is a 2-for-1!

The reason I'm including both dishes here is because I feel the methods and steps are basically identical, the ingredients are the variables you'll want to change. I also consider these two among my all-time favorite comfort foods and often have difficulty choosing which one to make! Enjoy now before meat becomes illegal in the NWO.

Let's start with the crowd pleaser, Irish Guinness stew (later is lamb curry.)

It starts with browning meat of course. Get the browned meat out of the pan and get in the vegies to start the cooking process. After vegies have had a chance to start, spread them out to the sides of the pan and work on your base (garlic, onion, tomato paste etc.) There really is no wrong way to go about this, just be sensible and adjust to what you like. I try to keep it pretty traditional though with potatoes, carrots, celery, and I can't ever say no to mushrooms so..

Once everything is mixed in I fill the pot or pan with beef broth and about 1-2 bottles of Guinness. This adds such a hearty and complex flavor to the stew even if you don't like the beer itself. Do not omit this step!

Let it simmer for about an hour to reduce the liquid. Add a flour or cornstarch slurry to thicken as you like. I season and flour the beef before the browning process which will help it thicken later as it reduces. Add fresh herbs such as parsley, thyme, or chives as a garnish.



The lamb curry is pretty much the same process. Brown meat, start off with your base, which will include olive oil (butter works too) and curry this time (I just use a pre-made yellow curry.)

In this mixture I have diced sweet potatoes, chickpeas, raisins, and raw cashews. You can stir in some plain yogurt during simmering to add richness.

It's that easy! I've seen some recipes call for mint but I'm not a big fan so I just stick with parsley. You'll definitely want to eat this with some rice.

My wife made Irish Guinness Stew a few nights ago. Was delicious. Since the weather is going to finally start getting colder here on the east coast im looking forward to some Goulash, Chili, Pot Pies etc. Ive already started drinking hot cider instead of coffee. Theres been a few beef pastry recipees id like to try. I use to eat alot of pasta as a kid but cant really stomache all the carbs unless i want to go from 155lbs to 220 in a couple months lol a reply to: 2Narcoleptic2Buddha

a reply to: 2Narcoleptic2Buddha

Love me my Saturday morning cooking shows. I’ll have to try this one out. Maybe for Thanksgiving!

Thanks for recipe!

I'll have to give this a try. Thanks for the recipe!

I made chicken corn chowder last night using a pressure cooker. My first soup from scratch. I put it back in tonight to add some ingredients as it was pretty bland and watery. The seal wasn't on correctly so it had a water error. My being a total dummy kept adding water until I did a bit of research and installed the seal correctly. I'm working outside in a cold wind so it really helps to have something warm with simple ingredients.

I make lots of soups and stews, and I never brown the meat. I also make lots of beef bone broth and I do not bake the bones. From researching the subject years ago, I see a negative health effect of browning the meat. It is more work to make it without browning the meat, but if done properly, the soups or stews are really good and full of flavor, but take a little longer to prepare. Browning meat does cause the creation of some troublesome chemistries, and the high heat does destroy some nutrients.

But if people want to do it, it is their choice, if you do it occasionally, no problem, but I make a lot of soups and it would add up and be unhealthy when ten percent of your diet is soups and stews made that way. Plus, high heat destroys the calming chemicals in meats....many people don't like that, they want things that makes them go go go.

Can't say there is a right or wrong with this, but people should think about this if they eat a lot of foods that have the same effects, many foods can be prepared to block the calming chemistry. Then they have to go on anti-anxiety meds or antidepressants if they are off balance in their diet that way.

I guess slow cooking overnight might be a good idea in the future. Thanks for the tip. I have a couple bags of beef bones and am going to be using them very soon. It gets cold here in Alberta.

originally posted by: WannabeeAuCourant
I guess slow cooking overnight might be a good idea in the future. Thanks for the tip. I have a couple bags of beef bones and am going to be using them very soon. It gets cold here in Alberta.

I usually boil the marrow bones when the weather gets cold. It takes a minimum of twelve hours on the stove to make good bone broth from marrow bones. I add the vinegar about every two hours or more of boiling, maybe an eighth of a cup at a time. Tried adding it all at once like some recipes say, but it works best adding some every two to three hours in my opinion.

We have seven quarts of bone broth in the freezer now, I make beef soups and stews with the meaty soup bones from the half cow we get. We also get stew meat from the sirloin when we do the cutting order, and even render the tallow to make frying oils. We get a grass fed organic cow, what we do not take usually goes either to the help at the processing place or gets tossed into a big trailer they send to a dog food place or something. We choose the cuts, but last cow we got filet Mignon and New York strips instead of our desired T Bones and porterhouse for some reason, maybe someone reading the cutting sheet needs glasses. It doesn't matter to us, and the filets do make great beef stroganoff. We get Rib steaks instead of a standing rib roast, but get all the chuck cut into roasts.

Been buying a half or full head for the last thirty years or more now, the store crap around here has no flavor. As long as the cattle are pastured and fed mostly grass, then dry aged, the meat is good. We don't like the full corn fed beef, we had one, it could be cut with a fork after cooked, but it was just too mushy. Half angus is good, but I prefer full Limosine or even half Limosine or some other similar type mixed with the angus.

The commercial beef in the bigger stores up here is kind of tasteless. I do not know if they do the wet aging there in Canada for their commercial beef, that is not as good as hanging it for a few weeks or more.

Haven't bought a pig for many years now. I kind of like pork from pigs that are outside every day for a while and eat decent food. Some farmers here get old bread to feed the pigs and there are so many chemicals in that old commercial bread that the taste is not as good as the pork from the pigs that eat locally produced pig mash and eat garden scraps.

originally posted by: rickymouse23
I make lots of soups and stews, and I never brown the meat.

Interesting, I've never heard of not doing this step. But I know you know your food chemistry probably better than anyone on the planet!