When life hands you a Hurricane, make stew

I've made it through Hurricane Sandy! While the "super-storm" was bit of a non-event here, I have heard it has caused major damage in New Jersey and NYC.

After being sent home early from work because of the impending hurricane-apocalypse, I found myself with a whole day to myself, except I couldn't go anywhere because most places were closed. What the heck was I going to do? Well, I suppose I could have cleaned or done laundry, but that's not very interesting or fun and would have made one heck of a boring blog post. So, I decided to cook. One of my favorite rainy day recipes is Guinness Stew, which is a traditional thick Irish stew that has had Guinness added to it. Its easy and straight forward to make, yet the result is a hearty stew that has complex undertones of smokiness mixed with the sweetness of the meat and the bitterness of the Guinness. I especially love it with fresh baked bread, which conveniently enough my roommate Joel offered to make if I made the stew.

Step 1: Quarter 8-10 russet potatoes (skins on). Coarsely chop three stalks of celery and a three carrots (peeled). Add all the veggies to the bottom of a stew pot (I use a 12 qt. pot, but I think 8 qt. would be large enough). Place one bay leaf on top of the veggies/tubers. Set this to the side because now we need to focus on the most important part of this recipe: DA MEAT!

Step 2) Browning beef is probably the most important step in making stew. The drippings from the beef provide most of the flavor, so if you burn or under-cook the meat your going to have an uphill battle getting the stew to come out right. Now, I have been accused (un-justly I might add) of confusing my cultures. I know the picture looks like I'm using a Wok to brown the beef for my Irish stew. Let me assure you this is not the case, it is in fact a traditional Irish pan called a.......................

right, ok, it's a freaking Wok. Seriously though, it's by far the most versatile pan I own ( I cook everything from 西红柿炒鸡蛋 to hamburgers in that thing) and it makes browning meat very simple. Normally what I do is coat 4 lbs of stew beef (which you can get at the store in the fresh meat section) in flour mixed with a pinch of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Then I place a couple of table spoons of oil in the Wok, crank the stove to "high" and stir-fry the beef until it is well browned. I'll also add a bay leaf in with the meat for extra flavor. after the meat is good and browned I use a slotted spoon to transfer the meat to another bowl, leaving the drippings in the Wok.

Step 3) Then I stir-fry a whole chopped onion and three cloves (minced) garlic in the drippings and once the onions appear to become slightly transparent I'll through in around 1/2 oz. of beef broth to deglaze the mess. The I add everything that is in the wok to the stew pot with the vegetables and add the meat on top of that. Which should leave you with a pot that looks something like this:

Step 4) Now your probably asking yourself "wait, what the frick is all that extra stuff on top of the meat????" Well, they are the extra spices that I add to make my Guinness stew freaking awesome. Oh, what are those spices? That is a good question, not one that I am going to answer, but a good question none the less. Hey now, I slaved hard and long to come up with my own secret recipe! I'm not going to give it away just because you we're willing to waste 20 mins of your day to read my food based ramblings! I....hold on a sec........................

Ok, so I have just been informed by my lawyer (well, my border line alcoholic third year law student/para legal friend, which is close enough for me) that since I'm really only making minor alterations to a recipe I found on the net, I need to give proper credit to the original chef or else I'll be committing something called plagiarizer, what ever the heck that is.

That being the case I guess I'll have to tell you what all those spices are and share the link to the base recipe at the bottom of the page.

Here we go: Add on top of the meat: 1 (13 g) envelope Lipton Onion Soup Mix, 1 teaspoon dried thyme, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, 1 teaspoon creole seasoning, 1 teaspoon Italian herb seasoning. Also toss some chopped up mushrooms.

Step 5) Now, I understand that there are people out there that are uncomfortable for a variety of reasons with cooking with alcohol. Being of Irish ancestry, personally I am uncomfortable not cook with alcohol, but that's a topic for another time. If your someone who really is against cooking with alcohol (in this case beer) I would suggest using a) Kaliber non-alcoholic beer or b) water. You won't get the same rich flavor as you would from using Guinness, but you also won't have to feel guilty either ( believe me, being of Irish Catholic heritage I understand guilt).

For the rest of you borderline alcoholics out there, pour 16 oz. of Guinness draft or stout on top of everything in the pot. Put the lid on and place the pot over a low flame for four hours.

Step 6) After four hours two things should have happened. First, your house/apartment/flat/trailer/whatever should smell amazing (if you neighbors arn't beating down your door in order to get a dinner invite then you did something wrong). and Secondly the stew should look something like this:

Step 7) Now I know your thinking "dang that's watery." That's why for the next 4 hours your going to let the stew simmer on medium low with the lid off so all that extra alcohol and water can evaporate off. Also you'll need to start stirring the pot every couple of hours so the bottom of the stew doesn't burn. After another four hours (and for me eight episodes of Escaflowne) later you'll have this:

I added a couple of hunks of the fresh pumpernickel that my roommate Joel made to my bowl. The two went together well. 

Step 8) EAT

 As I sat back and enjoyed my bowl of homemade awesomeness, Super-storm sandy raged outside my window. Well, raged might be a bit strong, it was more like "threw a temper tantrum." Either way though, I had fresh bread, fresh stew, and a guaranteed day off of work the following day, in other words everything d in my world was perfect.
And here is the promised link to the base recipe that I use: http://www.food.com/recipe/guinness-beef-stew-in-a-crock-pot-259913?oc=linkback