Keep toasty with Slow-cooked Stout and Beef Pies
All this rain of late has left us pining for the warm, hearty meals of winter to comfort our damp spirits. And with St Patrick’s Day just around the corner, we thought an Irish-style Slow-cooked Stout and Beef Pie would tickle your weekend cook-up fancy. A fine stout can be sourced from most good bottleshops or grab a squealer of Green Beacon Brewing’s Penny Porter to cook with at home.
INGREDIENTS
puff pastry
1 kg stewing beef, cut into cubes
4 rashers bacon, roughly chopped
4 carrots, roughly chopped
2 onions, diced
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 bay leaf
330 ml organic beef stock
330 ml stout or porter beer
1 egg
olive oil
salt and pepper
sesame seeds
TO MAKE
Prepare all the vegetables and chop up the meat. In a large saucepan, fry the onion, celery and bacon in a dash of olive oil until onion turns translucent. Remove from heat and transfer to a bowl.
Lightly dust the beef chunks in the plain flour, before frying in batches in a little olive oil. Once browned on all sides, remove batch and add to the bacon bowl, continuing frying process with remaining beef.
Return the beef and bacon mixture along with the carrots, bay leaf, stock and stout to the saucepan and dust with a good grind of salt and pepper. Put on the lid and cook for two hours. After this time, remove the lid and check the taste, adding more salt if desired. Keeping the lid off, turn up the heat slightly to increase the simmer, bubbling the mixture down until sticky.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 180ºC. Grease a large muffin pan and cut the pastry into circles large enough to line each muffin hole, retaining a little overlap. Place the base of the pies into each hole and cut circular tops for the pies.
Once the meat is ready, fill each pie base with some of the sticky stew, leaving some space at the top. Place each pie top, pinching the edges to seal. Beat an egg and brush the tops of each pie. Poke a pencil-size hole into the top of each pie to allow steam to escape, before dusting each one with sesame seeds. Bake for 30 minutes in the oven until tops are browned and crispy.
Image via Brooklyn Brewshop.
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