Beef, Barley and Beer Stew

I haven't blogged about a recipe in a while so I thought I'd do one tonight, especially since I made a crazy, kick-ass stew tonight. It was amazing. It's Beef, Barley and Beer stew. It was so good that I'm never going to make regular beef stew again. Best part? Crazy simple and it only has a few ingredients in it.

The hardest part for me was finding the beer for it. The recipe calls for "dark" beer. I am not much of a drinker at all and I really dis-like beer so I had no idea what beer could be good to cook with. I took to Facebook and asked my beer-loving FB friends what they thought. The consensus online was Rickard's Dark. So that's what I bought and it worked very well. I used my beer field trip as an excuse to hit up the mall and get a few groceries along the way. It was such a nice and sunny day that I was happy to be out and about.

This recipe is originally from the tv show "Fresh, Simple, Delicious" with host Lovoni Walker. It's a Canadian show that focuses on simple recipes that use a lot of local ingredients. Here's a link to the original recipe http://www.simplefreshdelicious.com/recipes/beef-barley-and-beer-stew

As with most recipes, I tweaked it suite my tastes. Here's what you'll need:

Oil (vegetable or olive)
3lbs of stewing beef, trimmed of any visible fat
1/2 large onion, chopped/sliced (use the whole thing if you like onions. I don't so I only used half)
4 carrots, peeled and chopped (if they're really big, use less. Unless you really like carrots).
6 garlic cloves, minced or finely chopped (use 4 if you're not a garlic fan)
1 package sliced mushrooms (I added these. The original recipe didn't have them).
4 cups (1 liter) dark beer
1 cup beef broth
2 rosemary sprigs ( I took mine off the stem and chopped them a bit )
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup barley ( I used pot barley simply because that's what I had in my pantry )
Salt and Pepper

Use a large pot or dutch oven and put a little oil in the bottom. Brown the meat in batches, adding a little more oil as needed. Set aside.

Heat about 2tsp of oil in the pot (don't clean it out!). Add in the onions, carrots, garlic and mushrooms (if you're using them). Cook for about 5 minutes until the onions have softened.

Add in everything else (warming, the beer will foam up!) and stir. Don't forget to add the beef back in. Add in some pepper and salt. I used about 1/2 tsp of pepper and 4 good grinds of sea salt. Don't use too much salt but do put some in.

Bring everything to a boil then cover and turn the heat down to med-low. Simmer/boil gently for about 1.5 hours. Stir it every now and then. Un-cover and cook for about 30 minutes until it's thickened. I only had to un-cover it for about 15 minutes. I let it sit for 5 minutes and then served it up and it was AMAZING. I'm taking it for lunch tomorrow.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Sarah