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Hearty Flemish Beef Stew
 
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Prep Time: 0 Minutes
Cook Time: 0 Minutes
Ready In: 0 Minutes
Servings: 8
Another of mom's favorite recipes. The recipe is so faded it is hard to make out, but I know it by heart from making it so often, it varies in precise amounts, It would qualify as a guessipe.
Ingredients:
4 lbs. of best quality stew beef (buy a whole roast, and cut it in 2 inch cubes yourself and save the money by doing the work)
seasoned flour for dredging (salt and pepper mixed in flour)
4 large onions sliced (one onion per lb of beef cubes)
2 large garlic cloves minced
8 rashers of thick cut bacon, diced
2 cups of dark ale-actually use 2 bottles
1 cup of beef broth
1 tsp of thyme
2 tbsp of red wine vinegar
3 tbsp of brown sugar
red skin potatoes, roasted after being rolled in oil and coarse salt
Directions:
1. Heat dutch oven and render the bacon fat from the diced bacon.
2. Remove the crisply cooked bacon; reserve for garnish later.
3. leave the renderings in hot pan.
4. add 2 tbsp of canola oil to bacon drippings
5. Dredge the beef in the seasoned flour.
6. Brown very well in hot fat, do not crowd the pan, do in batches.
7. After all the beef is browned, in the drippings left behind, cook the onions and garlic over low heat until softened and cooked but not browned.
8. remove from dutch oven and add to the beef that is resting.
9. Pour the ale and broth in the oven and bring to a boil, stirring up from the bottom to get up all the goodies stuck to the bottom of the pan.
10. Reduce liquid by 1/3 on high simmer
11. Add beef cubes, onion and garlic back into the liquid.
12. Stir in thyme, red wine vinegar and brown sugar.
13. cover tightly with lid and bake in 350 degree oven for 2 hours. Don't peek.
14. Bake the tiny red skin potatoes on a lipped oiled cookie sheet for the last hour of baking of the Flemish stew.
15. Often roast whole small carrots with the salted small red potatoes. Sometimes I crumble dried rosemary over the veggies while they roast.
16. Serve in large shallow soup bowls topped with the reserved crumbled bacon, with lots of crusty bread and good cold ale.
By RecipeOfHealth.com