Hello hungry peoples,
This is one of my new favourite recipes – a boozy beef stew with cheddar dumplings. It was a rare little snowflake in that I made it up and it worked perfectly the first time. This never ever happens. I usually spend weeks tweaking and perfecting to the point my family are like “please god, never feed this dish to us again!”.
The meat is slow-cooked until meltingly tender in stock and brandy. The brandy isn’t a hard rule, whatever you have at hand such as red or white wine would also work perfectly nicely. I like the kick brandy gives to this dish. You could also forgo the porcini if you don’t have it but I find it is excellent for really bringing out the meatiness of the dish. I always use it when I want a dish to have real depth of flavour.
Topping the stew with dumplings makes this a one pot, complete meal. Of course the dumplings themselves are golden, fluffy and absolutely delicious. I love them so hard!
Boozy Beef Stew and Cheddar Dumplings
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 2 hours
Total time: 2 hours 15 minutes
Yield: 6 serves
Calories per serving: 920
Ingredients
- 1 kg beef chuck steak
- 150g speck
- 100g mushrooms
- 1 brown onion
- 2 carrots
- 1 cup green beans
- 2 cloves garlic
- 10g dried porcini mushrooms
- 3-4 cups beef stock
- 1/2 cup brandy
- 2 tbsp plain flour
- 4 tbsp olive oil
Dumplings
- 2 cups self-raising flour
- 50g chilled butter
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
- 1/2 cup grated cheddar
- 1 cup milk
- 2 shallots
- 1 tbsp salt
Cooking Directions
- Put a metal casserole dish on a medium heat with the olive oil.
- Dice the chuck steak into large chunks, season with salt and pepper and brown it in the pan (do this in batches so the meat doesn’t stew). Remove from the pan.
- Dice the onion, speck and two cloves of garlic and fry until brown and caramelised.
- Add the carrots and mushrooms and allow to brown slightly.
- Add the 2 tbsps of flour and mix to let it cook slightly.
- Deglaze the pan with the 1/2 cup brandy.
- Add the 2 cups of beef stock, the green beans and the chuck steak to the dish. Put a lid on and turn the heat down to low.
- Let the stew slowly cook for 1.5 hours, checking to see if it is drying out, giving it a stir and adding more beef stock if needed.
- Now to make the dumplings. Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
- Put 2 cups of flour into a bowl with 1 tbsp salt.
- Grate the 50g butter and incorporate it into the flour.
- Add the chedder, chopped spring onions and the 1 cup milk and use your hands to incorporate it together.
- Grab squash sized amounts of dough and roll into balls.
- Add the balls to the stew and put it in the oven to bake for 20 minutes (or until golden). That’s it, you’re done!
Boozy beef stew with cheddar dumplings
Difficulty: Easy-medium
Those cheddar dumplings look amazing Karen
Oh, that looks like such luscious comfort food.