Talk-A-Vino

What defines the simplicity of the recipe? For me, it is the limited number of ingredients, and ease of the cooking process. For instance, I would never designate my beloved traditional cassoulet as a simple recipe – it takes about 24 hours to make and the list of ingredients is a page long.

The recipe I would like to share today fit the simplicity bill quite well. It has only 3 ingredients (or four, if you would consider garlic as a separate ingredient), and the cooking process is quite simple (but you do spend a bit of the time prepping). As this is a beef stew, you can even reduce the list of ingredients down to two – the beef stew for me must have beef (huh, really?) and onions – everything else is a bonus.

Today’s dish is a beer braised beef stew, which includes onions, garlic and Sicilian eggplant. There is no any particular reason whatsoever to include the Sicilian eggplant into this dish, except that I was in the store, the eggplant looked very good and wanted to buy it, and then I had to actually do something with it.

Below is the recipe, and then I will give you step by step guide with pictures – for no other reason that I like to take food pictures. Here we go.

Beer Braised Beef Stew Recipe

Total time – about 3 hours. Prep time: 40-50 minutes, Cooking time: 2 hours

5 lb of beef – you can use any cut. If you will use a very lean cut, you might have to increase the cooking time until meat is tender

4 medium onions

half a cup of garlic (adjust to your liking)

1 Sicilian eggplant (replace with any other eggplant or skip altogether)

1 can/bottle of beer, 330 oz – you can use any beer, but I would suggest that it should have some intensity to it – lager is good, porter is good too.

Olive oil (any oil you use for frying)

1 teaspoon of Smoked Paprika

Salt, Pepper to taste

1 teaspoon of the Kosher Salt or any other large grain salt

You initial step includes a bit of slicing and dicing. You will need to peel and slice the onions:

Yep, crying is part of it:

While you are at it, you can also slice the Sicilian eggplant:

Slice it into the small cubes, put into a bowl, add the kosher salt, mix together and let it stand for 15-20 minutes. The salt will make the eggplant to lose some of the water, so it will be a bit faster at cooking.

Prepare the garlic – you can use the whole cloves, only break them slightly with the knife:

Add olive oil to the pan, put it up at the medium heat, and start sauteing the onions with garlic, turning them periodically, for about 15-20 minutes, or until the onion gains color and becomes soft and translucent:

In parallel, you should start searing the meat. I’m using here a beef stew cut from the store – of course you can cut the piece of beef on your own. We need to sear the meat to get rid of all the unnecessary liquid and to gain the nice color. From here on, I’m using my favorite cooking vessel, the enameled cast iron casserole. To sear the meat, you will need to add oil and then put on the high heat – how high the heat should be depends on your stove. I have an electric stove, and if I will heat up the cast iron on the highest setting, the food will burn before it will sear, so I have to adjust it accordingly – but you do need high heat for searing.

You can add salt, pepper and smoked paprika, and continue searing for about 15-20 minutes, turning once:

And now, it is the beer time! Well, you can take a sip, if you want, but remember, you need this beer for cooking:

At this point ( we are at about 20 minutes into our cooking process), the onions should be ready the meat is seared, so you can first pour the beer into the casserole dish, and use it as a deglazing agent. Add onions to the meat, reduce heat to medium, cover casserole with the lid and let it be.

Add olive oil to the pan which is now freed up, put the eggplant and saute for about 15-20 minutes, or until it softens up and gains color:

Add the eggplant to the casserole, replace the lid and let it cook for about two hours or until the beef is tender, stirring periodically.

And you are done! Your dish should look similar to this:

Beef stew works well with lots of starch options. Serve over (or with) boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, rice, pasta, buckwheat – anything your heart desires.

That concludes our picture presentation of the recipe. I hope you will find this dish easy enough to make, and if you will end up making it or have done something similar before – let me know. Until the next time – cheers!