PW: Beer-Braised Beef with Onions

Oh my goodness.

This was fantastic.

I think it had to do with cooking with a hearty beer and not my usual "whatever-we-have-on-hand-so-probably-Corona-Light" style... thank goodness for Fall Sam Adams brews!

PW: Beer-Braised Beef with Onions

Verdict:  Delicious, delicious, delicious.
Cook it again:  Yes.  Sooner than later.
Cost Factor:  Surprisingly inexpensive, especially if you have beer on hand.

Consider this a heartened-up pot roast.  Don't let that turn you away.  Everyone needs a heartened-up pot roast, and this is a particularly good choice.


Brown a pot-roast steak on all sides with salt and pepper.

While it's cooking, chop some onions and garlic.

Prepare three beers.  Drink one, and have two for the recipe.

Remove the browned steak and brown the onions and garlic. 

Add two bottles of beer, a whole slew of spices (I know the photo looks awful.  Ground thyme is hideous, no?), and some broth.

Cook off the alcohol for a few minutes.

The Rolling Rock bottle in the background is not the drinking beer.  It's a pepper shaker we inherited.  I have no idea how.

Cook low and slow in the oven for as long as you possibly can.

When it's been at least two hours and/or you can no longer stand it, take it out, cut it up (or pull it apart, as the case likely is), and devour.

PW says not to undersalt.  Don't take her too literally.  We over-salted because in the past we've found her recipes to be, in fact, under-salted, so we took her warning as a sign of trouble.  In the future we'll skip the salt other than our usual dose and rely on the saltiness from the broth and the butter.

We took this out after only about 2 hours because we were starving and it was getting late, and even though it was only just Mick and I doing the bulk of the eating, when I went back up for thirds there was nothing left.

Serve this also with mashed potatoes or possibly the PW crash potatoes -- or heck, even broccoli (which we did) and some other starch.  Just make sure you have some good, crusty bread available to sop up the amazing gravy.  We only used garlic toast but in the future some crusty loaf of bread will be a required ingredient for this recipe.

I'm pretty sure this recipe was enhanced because we used a nice, rich beer.  You can't taste the alcohol, but I somehow don't believe that a lager would have done this justice.

My only suggestion is that you don't rush this recipe.  It's a fabulous weeknight dinner, but if you plan to eat this on a weeknight make sure that the minute you walk in the door in the afternoon/evening, prepping this is the first thing you do.  Then do all your other stuff once this is in the oven.  We ate it sooner than we'd have preferred just because it was encroaching on bath time and bedtime for the kids, but even another hour would have made this even more tender and amazing.  We just ran out of time.

I assure you that if you make this, you won't regret it.  It was delicious.

--Jen

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