Flemish Stew Part 2

Legourmet TV

Flemish Stew part 2

So, once the meat is brown and it’s thickened, you want to turn your pan down because you want to sweat these onions down and you want to caramelize that. But just like the French Onion Soup, you do not want to burn them because that just changes the flavor. It ruins the flavor completely. So turn the pan down, let it cool down a little bit before you put the onions in. You might want to put just a touch of more butter in just to keep everything moving at the beginning. But once these onions start to sweat down, they’re going to release a lot of liquid. You’re going to build a lot of flavors with these onions.

So, in with the onions. They can all go in one go and put the lid on, on low. Let them go for about five minutes before you even to think about stirring them. So, we’ve got about 20 minutes with the onions in the Dutch Oven and they’re just absolutely incredible. They’ve sweated down to almost nothing. They’re deep, deep brown mahogany color. The sweet aroma is just absolutely incredible. So at this point, we’re going to put the beef back into the pot. Put all the juice back in there as well. We are going to add the beef stock. There is about two cups there. We’re going to bring the temperature back up to kind of a medium low on this stove, it is a gas stove so I am going to put it to about four. And then, we’re going to add the beer.

Now, this is a Chemay. This is a Trappist Beer. It actually can be called the Trappist Beer because it’s brewed at the monastery under the supervision of monks and the proceeds go to their good works around the world. So, it is a little bit different than an Abbey Beer. An Abbey Beer in Belgium is the beer where the abbey has license to her name to another brewery and then they bottle the beer. It’s got a cork. It is refermented in the bottle. That was not supposed to happened but obviously it did, so be careful with that.

So we put the beer into the cast iron pot into the Dutch oven. Now, this is a very dark ale. I’m sure there are people out there who are saying, “Oh! I can’t serve that to kids because it’s got beer in it.” Well, any alcohol that’s in this beer is going to burn off long before this makes it to the table. All it’s going to bring to this is an incredible flavor. It is really going to kind of tie the whole dish together. So, about three quarters of this bottle just to cover everything that is in the pot. I’m going to add two bay leaves and a couple of sprigs of thyme. And at this point, I’m going to add carrots. You don’t have to add carrots. I kind of like them in there. Give it a little bit of a stir just to kind of mix everything together. Now, you put the lid on this and you leave it on the stove just to simmer for about 1 ½ to 2 hours. You could put this in the oven at anywhere between 225 and 325 depending on how long you want it to cook. A little bit longer in the oven just to develop the flavors. So, we’ll come back to this in about 1 ½ hour, we’ll take a look at it. You might want to stir it every once in a while just to kind of make sure that it is doing what it is supposed to do. But if you’ve got the temperature on the stove right, you really don’t have to do a lot to it. You can just kind of put it on there and walk away.

So here it is. It’s been simmering now for about two hours. It’s a beautiful, beautiful brown color. It smells absolutely fabulous. I’m just going to bring some of these out in a bowl so that you can see it. Now, you would serve this over mashed potatoes, you could put it over rice, you could put it over noodles. And while this will taste great now, it will taste even better tomorrow. You know, you can put this in the fridge and not serve it on the first day, serve it on the second day. It also works really well. You can freeze it, and then two weeks when you come home from work in a real rush and you need something hearty to eat, you can pull this out, microwave it, just put it over a little rice. It’s absolutely fantastic.

Thanks for stopping by today. We’ll see you again soon.


Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services