This week in Houston has been terribly cold. As a result, I decided I REALLY wanted a good beef stew for dinner one night. Last winter, I had a terrific Guinness Stew at Paddy Murphy’s in Bangor. So I decided to try to make one of my own with a few modifications. I started with this recipe but ended up using Shiner Bock beer because that’s the only dark beer the grocery store had in single cans. I don’t like dark beer to drink so I wasn’t about to buy a bunch of it. I also used short ribs instead of stew meat because one this I liked about the stew at Paddy Murphy’s in the beef wasn’t really in cubes. Lastly, I increased the overall size of the recipe.
The instant pot is super good at this type of recipe because once you brown the beef bits, saute the veggies and deglaze the pan you set it and forget it. You can wait however long you want to do the thickening step. My initial cook was done at about 2. At which point I pulled the bones out of the instant pot. It had pulled all meat off them. Then I broke up the meat and removed the bit of connective chewy stuff from the meat. I put all this back in the instant pot and set it on “keep warm” til dinner time – 5pm. At which point, I set the instant pot to saute to thicken and heat through the stew to serve it. The final product was enjoyed by myself and my in-laws. My husband and kid are anti-stew which truly was there loss because it was hearty and rich. It reheated well too so a massive win all around.