Beer is the Secret Ingredient in this Stew
You know this beef stew has got to be fabulous if I made it and thoroughly enjoyed it during a fluke 90-degree heatwave a few weeks ago.
So just think how satisfying it will be during the bone-chilling fall weather to come.
“Beef-Ale Stew and Green Onion-Buttermilk Dumplings” is from the new “The Sunset Cookbook” (Oxmoor House) by the editors of Menlo Park-based Sunset magazine.
It’s the first new cookbook in 15 years by Sunset.
As a native San Franciscan, I grew up with Sunset magazine as a staple in my family’s house. A stack was always found on our coffee table. Over the years, the look of the magazine may have changed. But one thing that hasn’t is the reliability of the recipes. Meticulously tested, they always work and taste delicious.
The new cookbook, of which I recently received a review copy, follows that tradition. More than 1,000 recipes are packed inside this weighty book, which were selected from the magazine, then retested and updated.
The beauty of this stew is that the thick sauce is really made from nothing more than natural beef juices cooked down for three hours with caramelized onions and two bottles of ale. Yet it tastes far more complex than that. I used the New Belgium Brewing company’s Trippel Ale brewed with coriander, which was smooth, hoppy, robust and had an almost faint caraway note.
