Tag Archives: beer

Guinness Lamb Stew with Wild Rice

I know you all think I’m weird because I don’t like soup. But spooning hot liquid into my mouth (and spilling it down my face, because that’s how I roll) is not my idea of a good time. I do, however, have a fondness for stew. Especially stew with beer in it, because beer is a great tenderizer of things. And because I like beer.

I’ve had this stewing lamb in my freezer for a while and I decided it was probably time I do something about it.

So I took it out, put it on a plate, and patted it dry with a paper towel.

Then, in a bowl, I took a small scoop of flour, added salt and pepper, and gave it a stir.

Into that I hucked the lamb cubes, and gave them a stir as well.

I heated up my trusty cast iron skillet with a few tablespoons olive oil inside. Then, shaking the excess flour off the lamb, I plopped it in the skillet to brown.

While that was going on I cut up some vegetables: carrots, an onion, and a package of mushrooms.

I didn’t have any potatoes, that classic stew thickener, so I decided to use rice. This wild rice blend from Trader Joe’s is excellent.

I took the browned lamb cubes out and put them on a plate to rest a few minutes.

Then I added a bit more oil to the pan and chucked in the vegetables, giving the onions a wee bit of a head start in the cooking.

Once they’ve softened you can add the rest.

Now you can chuck the meat back in. Then I plopped in some parsley, Newfoundland savoury, rosemary, and thyme. If I’d had sage I would have used that, just to make up the lyrics to that “Scarborough Fair” song.

I also added a few more tablespoons flour.

At this point I ran out of space in my pan so I transferred the contents of the skillet to a larger saucepan. I used a bit of beef broth to deglaze the pan a bit and poured that into the pot, along with the rest of the beef broth (about 3 cups).

Then came two cans of Guinness stout (minus a sip or two, for quality control of course).

Then the rice.

Then I brought it to a simmer, lowered the heat, and let that gently bubble away, stirring every so often, for about an hour.

Excellent. Even more so the next day.

Guinness Beef Stew

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Oh yeah. The fact that my fingers are going numb with cold right now tells me it’s comfort food season. And what’s more comforting than a nice beef stew?

The other day at Costco I went a bit nuts and purchased one of their large packages of excellent stewing beef. ”I’ll make boeuf Bourgignon,” I said, forgetting two important things: 1) I am horribly allergic to red wine; and 2) I do not own a Dutch oven.

So scratch that. Let’s cook with beer instead. I took a bit of inspiration from the Guinness Storehouse website, and a little from Jamie Oliver, but other than that I just kind of winged it.

First I started off by roasting some of my vegetables. That’s 1 head garlic, with the top chopped off, 1 package white mushrooms chopped in half, and 1 package pearl onions, peeled.

Drizzle those with olive oil and roast at 400°F for about half an hour, and give the onions and mushrooms a good stir about halfway through.

Then I peeled and roughly chopped 3 parsnips and 4 carrots, and a small bunch of celery. And some potatoes, which aren’t in this shot. How many potatoes? I don’t remember. I didn’t take a picture of them.

That all goes straight into the pot.

You can tip in the roasted onions and mushrooms, too.

Save the garlic on a plate for a little bit.

Now you can work on your meat, and this is going to take a while. This is whatever size the package of stewing beef is that comes from Costco, which is extremely large, but the beef is truly excellent and I highly recommend it. I cut my chunks in half just to make them more manageable with a spoon. Then you pat them dry with a paper towel and put them on a plate. You could use a clean tea towel to dry your meat if you were feeling environmentally conscious, but let’s face it: ew.

In a bowl, mix together some flour (I used buckwheat just in case a gluten-free person came over for dinner sometime in the future – but then the Pie pointed out that Guinness has gluten in it so I’m an idiot), salt, pepper, and cayenne seasoning.

Spill some of that onto a plate and spread it out. Roll your meat chunks in the flour.

Brown the meat, working in small batches, in that skillet you already used on medium heat. Add some more olive oil if it starts to dry out and smoke. Chuck the browned beef into the pot with the vegetables. This is probably the most tedious step, and takes a while.

Once you have browned all the meat, pour about 3 1/2 cups beef broth into the vegetable/meat pot. I found this concentrated stuff at the grocery store. All you have to do is add boiling water. Sure takes up less space in my cupboard!

Tie a bundle of thyme and rosemary together and chuck that in as well. I find if you tie the bundle string to the handle of the pot it makes getting it out later a lot easier. Bring the contents to a simmer.

In the skillet that you have been using, plop a little butter and more olive oil and let that melt.

Add in the garlic you roasted earlier and mash it with a wooden spoon.

Then pour in 2 cans Guinness stout beer and bring that to a simmer.

Scrape the bottom lots with your wooden spoon.

Pour that whole lot into your bubbling stew and let that simmer with the lid off, stirring occasionally, to reduce for a while (at least an hour). You may find you have to add in a bit of corn starch after a while for thickening if you used a gluten-free flour.

We served ours with some beer bread made out of Mill Street’s Oktoberfest.

You can simplify all this by doing it all in a slow cooker, but I find I prefer the sharper flavours of the roasted vegetables and the constant stirring — you’d still have to brown the meat before slow-cooking it anyway. But boy it is time-consuming.

Worth it, though.

Practical Alcoholism: Cutting Glass Bottles

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This was actually a project that Cait came up with as a guest post eons ago. Obviously, she took too long to do it, I got impatient, and now I’m going to go ahead and do it myself. Because that’s what I do. I do it myself. It’s kind of the point of this here blog.

The City of St. John’s has just this past year instituted a city-wide curbside recycling program. Yes, we are about twenty years behind the times on this one, but we’re making progress. What the city does not recycle, however, is glass. I’m not entirely sure I understand why, but that’s the way it is. We previously employed a private recycling plant that would take absolutely everything, including glass, but they of course disappeared once recycling became free. As a result we’ve now started tailoring our grocery shopping to buying items that come in cans and plastic containers, rather than glass. But some of that stuff sticks around. I re-use glass jars as much as I can, especially when it comes to the contents of my spice cabinet. Even so, we still have a lot of glass that goes in the garbage. And let me tell you, for a girl who has spent the last 25 years of her life recycling, it feels some weird, b’y, to chuck glass in the trash.

So how can we re-use it some more? You can only deal with so many spare bottles and jars lying around. Their function is practical but limited. So let’s create some other sorts of vessels from these things by learning to cut glass.

I purchased Ephrem’s Deluxe Bottle Cutting Kit from Artistry In Glass, based in London, Ontario, for you Canadian shoppers.

This kit has been around, pretty much unaltered, since the seventies. In fact I don’t think they’ve ever bothered to change the photographs in the little projects book that comes with it. But why mess with something that works so well, right?

You need some glass for this project. Anything that is round, really, with smooth sides will work for you. Bottles, jars. You name it. The reason I bought the “deluxe” kit as opposed to the regular kit is because it comes with an adapter so you can work on the curved parts of bottle necks and stuff, instead of just the straight sides. But I haven’t gotten to that skill level yet.

In any case, you’ll need to clean and dry your glass thoroughly first. This means soaking off the labels and rinsing the containers out well. If you can’t get some of the glue off the glass, try peanut butter. It works really well, I promise.

So now I’m all set. With my little kit at the ready, I wanted to make sure I did this right.

I watched the video about how to do it the way the cutting kit company tells you to in the instructions, with a candle and an ice cube.

And then I watched another video about a slightly easier and more efficient way to do it with boiling and cold water. I will show you both.

This is the result of my first attempt to cut beer bottles. As you can see, it’s not perfect, but it’s not bad, either. I needed more practice. You are not going to succeed at this on your first try either, so make sure you have lots of practice glass around before you start getting into the stuff you actually want to use.

Beer bottles are the best to practice on, because generally beer is cheaper than the more expensive wines that come in the nice bottles. Plus you can get several tries in if you buy a six-pack. The other bonus of practicing on beer bottles is beer glass is thinner and more prone to shattering (unlike jars of preserves, beer is cold-canned, and the bottles are not designed for temperature shock). So because the bottles break easier, you have to be more careful in your practice.

Scoring the Glass:

So this is how you do it.

The kit has all sorts of knobs and screws that you need to adjust first so the cutter is perpendicular to the cutting surface. This is important. Follow the directions and diagrams in the kit carefully.

Now, exerting firm, even pressure (you don’t have to press very hard either) and without stopping, roll the bottle or jar under your hands. You will hear the cutter making horrible gravelly noises as you do this. It is scoring the glass. Keep going all the way around, until you hear a distinct click. This is you hitting your original score mark. Now you can stop. Don’t score over the same spot twice.

If you don’t hit your original score mark, then you’ve messed up that particular cut. I do this often. I guess the pressure from my hands is uneven or something so the cutter and the bottle don’t stay where they are supposed to. This is where the practice comes in. Also make sure all your screws are tightened all the way so stuff doesn’t shift.

Once you’ve got your cut, you can start shocking the glass. We want to do this slowly and evenly.

Water Shocking Method:

I put a towel in the bottom of my sink, just to provide a bit of a cushion should some glass happen to drop. It will also catch the hundreds of tiny flakes of glass that fall off your bottles, so make sure to wash it thoroughly afterwards.

I have one jug of water in the fridge, the other boiling away on the stove.

Starting with boiling water, slowly pour a small stream over your score mark. Turn the bottle so you get all sides of it. Keep going until you can feel the bottle warm in your hands.

Now, pour on the cold water in the same way. You’ll start to hear some cracking — that’s the glass breaking along its score line.

Keep going, alternating boiling and cold water. There will be more cracking. Don’t try to force the two parts of your bottle apart. If they’re going to come apart they will do so on their own. Just keep alternating your water and it will eventually happen.

You can see here how I etched lines in parallel rings on this jar.

And then this is how it fell apart.

They didn’t fall apart completely evenly, but as I was only seeing if cutting multiple lines at once was even possible (as the book and the ‘net both tell you to do them one at a time), I wasn’t paying that much attention to my scoring.

Fire and Ice Method:

For argument’s sake, I also did the candle method as espoused by the kit itself.

Carefully hold the bottle just above a candle flame, so the flame nearly touches your score mark. Rotate the bottle slowly to evenly heat all the way around.

When the bottle is heated, take an ice cube to the score lines and rub it all the way around.

You will find that you have to do more repetitions for this method, but it’s slightly more accurate. Because the bottle is more gently treated your cuts will open straighter more times than not.

Of course, if you’re cutting rings, like I was here, the fire and ice method is very slow, as you have to do each ring individually. The water shock method is much better for cutting rings, but I would use the fire and ice method for the lips of drinking glasses and the like, where a completely straight edge is important.

Finishing:

When you have finally achieved an edge on glass that you like, you will need to grind down the edges, because this is broken glass — it’s super sharp.

The kit comes with this silicon carbide powder, which you can pour on a sheet of glass that you don’t need to use for anything else, add a drop of water, and rub away until all the sharp edges on the glass are gone.

It’s a little messy though. I prefer emery cloth, which is basically fine sandpaper, just the silicon carbide powder is glued to a sheet of paper. You can still add a few drops of water to it (this keeps the glass dust down), and grind away!