Beef au Vin

Photograph: Aidan Crawley
Photograph: Aidan Crawley
Serves: 5
Course: Main Course
Cooking Time: 3 hrs 0 mins

Ingredients

  • (serves 4-6)
  • Ingredients
  • Good knob butter
  • 150g diced bacon
  • 1 kg diced stewing beef
  • 3 large carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 2 onions, sliced
  • 300g button mushrooms, halved
  • 6 cloves garlic, peeled & chopped
  • 650-700ml stock
  • 2 glasses red wine (250ml)
  • 1-2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

In a large saucepan and over a highish heat, saute the bacon in the butter until crisp and then scoop out the bacon and set aside.

Next, in the same pan, brown the meat in batches in the bacon fat and set aside with the bacon.

In the fat that is left behind, saute the onions over a medium heat until they are softish – adding a little more butter if necessary.

Then add the carrots, mushrooms and garlic, and stir for a couple of minutes before adding the beef and bacon. The final stage involves adding the wine to deglaze the pan for a couple of minutes to release all those yummy bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Then add the stock, season well (you shouldn’t need too much salt) and cook with the lid on over a low heat for 2-3 hours until the meat is tender.

If it dries out a bit, just add more stock. Serve with the white-bean colcannon. Food cooked and styled by Domini Kemp and Gillian Fallon. Photographs by Aidan Crawley

Domini Kemp

Domini Kemp

Domini Kemp, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a chef and food writer