As recapped on Culinary Couture here, a group of DC area food bloggers and friends got together Sunday night for a potluck.  I met a bunch of cool blogger folks and ate too much good food.  With St. Patrick's Day looming, and an assignment that I bring a meat-based entrée to the potluck, I decided to make an Irish stout beef stew . . . drawing on my many years of Irish stew eating and stout drinking to make up a recipe.  Though I had originally planned on using Guinness, I saw a stout I'd never had before when I was shopping, O'Hara's Irish Stout, and decided to give it a try.  It's delicious.  After trying it, I went back and bought more to bring to the potluck and also bought a few extras for my own St. Patrick's Day celebrating.  I also saved some stew for my own St. Patrick's Day feast and made some soda bread last night using a recipe that Lemmonex, from Culinary Couture, got from her friend Irish Lebowski and was willing to share. (Thanks Lemmonex and Irish Lebowski!)

This recipe makes a big-ass pot of stew—it'd serve 12-16 as a main course.  Don't be shy about cutting the recipe in half to feed a more moderately sized group of 6-8.  Also . . . and this is an important also . . . plan on making this stew the day before you plan to eat it, so the flavors have an opportunity to marry one another over night.  And regarding the beef, I bought a beautiful 100+ day dry-aged 4 lb. beef sirloin tip roast from Eco Friendly Foods at the Dupont Circle farmers market the weekend before making this stew, because it was the only type of large beef roast they had that day.  It was awesome, but you could certainly get away with using a less expensive cut of beef.

Here's what I used:

• 4 Tablespoons olive oil
• 4 lb. beef roast, cut into 1" cubes
• 2 large carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/2" pieces
• 3 ribs celery, 1/2" slice
• 2 medium yellow onions, chopped
• 6 cloves, minced
• 2 Tablespoons thyme (I used dried, but fresh would be fine too.)
• 3 Bay leaves
• 2 bottles of Irish stout (I used 2-11.2 oz. bottles (for a total of 22.4 ozs.) of O'Hara's Irish Stout)
• 4 cups homemade chicken stock (I used chicken stock because it's what I had in my freezer.  Beef stock is more traditionally used in beef stew and can certainly be used here.)
• 2 cups button mushrooms (I used 1 cup white, 1 cup brown), cut any large ones into 1" pieces
• 4 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1" pieces
• 2 parsnips, peeled and sliced into 1/2" pieces
• 1/2 cup all purpose unbleached flour
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• Salt and pepper
• 1 bunch flat leaf parsley, rinsed and dried

Here's how I used it:

1. Preheat oven to 250°F.
2. Heat olive oil in large dutch oven or other large oven proof pot with lid over medium-high heat.
3. Brown beef in batches—don't crowd the pan—about 5 minutes per batch, and set aside browned beef in a bowl.
4. Sauté the carrots, celery and onions about 5 minutes.
5. Clear a little space in the middle of the pot and add the garlic, cooking for 30-60 seconds, until fragrant.
6. Add the beef back to the pot, along with the thyme, Bay leaves, Irish stout, stock, mushrooms and about a Tablespoon of salt and pepper.
7. Bring the pot to a boil and transfer to the preheated oven.  I left mine in the oven for nearly 5 hours, to ensure that the beef was ultra-ultra-falling-apart-tender.  I imagine you can get away with three hours.  This isn't rocket science—just stick a spoon in and try it—but don't burn your tongue!
8. An hour before you plan on removing your stew from the oven, add the potatoes and parsnips.  Adding them at this late stage will prevent them from overcooking and disintegrating into the mass of stew.  Check the potatoes and parsnips for doneness and remove the stew from the oven when they're done.
9. Refrigerate over night.
10. 1.5 to 2 hours before serving, remove the stew from the refrigerator, skim any fat from the top, and separate the solids from the liquids by placing a colander in a large bowl and pouring the liquid/broth from the dutch oven through the colander into the bowl.  Place the solids from the colander back into the dutch oven and set aside.  You'll now be making a gravy out of the broth.
11. Melt 1/4 cup butter in a heavy bottomed pan over low heat, then gradually add the flour, stirring constantly, to make a roux.  Continue stirring while the flour and butter combine into a roux and darken, for about a half hour.
12. With a whisk handy add about a quarter cup of the broth to the roux and whisk until thoroughly combined, then add another quarter cup and continue whisking.  Repeat until all of the broth has been incorporated or until you run out of room in the pot, in which case, simply pour the gravy back into the bowl containing the remaining broth and continue whisking until fully incorporated.
13. Salt and pepper the gravy to taste, add the vinegar to brighten things up a bit with some acidity, then pour the gravy into the dutch oven with the stew solids.
14. Heat the stew in the dutch oven over medium, stirring regularly, then serve topped with chopped parsley.

And, finally, here's the Irish soda bread recipe I've copied and pasted from Lemmonex at Culinary Couture (thanks, again, Lemmonex and Irish Lebowski!):

• 2 cup flour
• 3 Tablespoon sugar
• 3 Tablespoons butter
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (opt)
• 3/4 to 1 cup currants, dusted with flour
• 3/4 to 1 cup buttermilk (I substituted goat milk yogurt that I had bought at the farmers market Sunday)

1. Preheat oven to 300°F, with a baking stone if you've got one.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, soda.
3. With a fork, cut in butter until it looks like meal.
4. Stir in raisins and then add buttermilk, stirring only until ingredients are moist.  Add more buttermilk if needed to make a soft dough.
5. Turn dough onto floured board and knead until very smooth, about 2-3 minutes.
6. Flatten to a 6 inch circle.  With a sharp knife, make a cross on top of bread.  Bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes or until golden brown and bread sounds hollow when tapped.  (Mine took about 55 minutes, maybe because of the yogurt substitution.)
7. Remove and serve hot or cold with butter.