Irish Stew Recipe

Strangely this is my first attempt at Irish Stew.  For one reason or another I've never got around to it before.  I think because most of my recipe books are English they tend to feature a nice sounding British style beef or lamb stew but they never seem to come out just right for my taste.  Hubsters happy with them so it's obviously just me.  I think at some point I've had a good Irish Stew and now nothing else quite measures up.

I'm chucking my Beef and Ale Stew recipes and using this one instead it's simply scrumcious!!

I've cobbled this together from various recipes taking a little inspiration from each.



Here's the ingredients:

• Beef
• Carrots
• Onions
• Garlic
• Beer - Dark Ale
• Brown Sugar
• Tomato Puree
• Pepper
• Thyme
• Parsley
• Plain Flour
• Beef Stock
• Soy Sauce

Chop all the veggies, sling them all in the slow cooker. 

Some of my beef stew recipes recommend browning the beef before adding it to the slow cooker.  I usually do this but on this occasion I was in a rush and chose not to bother.  I once saw one of Jamie Oliver's programmes where he advised against browning the meat, saying it made little to no difference tot he taste or texture.  I don't need any more excuse to save myself a little work and this recipe certainly turned out well.  

Followed by the garlic

and herbs.

Stock,

sugar,

tomato puree and soy sauce.  

 Give it a stir and leave it to stew.

I serve a lot of my red meat type stews with mustard mash.  Hubby's not so keen but I love it.  It's a recipe I picked up in Malta, you make the mash as normal but add a good sized dollop of wholegrain mustard (gotta be wholegrain other mustard's don't work) along with the butter.,  Mash it in and dish it up.  The mustard really complements the beef and adds texture to the otherwise boring mash.  

Scrum-dillidy-umcious!!