Slow Cooker Beer Beef Stew

Not the Beer Pot Roast, which is a whole joint for slicing. This is diced stewing steak cooked until it falls apart in a thick beer gravy, with a beef stock pot and a red wine stock pot standing in for a bottle of wine. Twenty minutes of browning in the morning, eight hours of nothing, and it's better again the next day.

Ingredients

• 500 g diced stewing steak — chuck or braising steak, patted properly dry
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 2 onions — diced
• 3 carrots — chunked
• 2 celery sticks — sliced
• 200 g mushrooms — halved
• 2 cloves garlic — crushed
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 2 bay leaves, 1 tsp thyme
• Oil, salt, pepper

Braising liquid

• 330 ml beer
• 1 beef stock pot + 200 ml water
• 1 red wine stock pot
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

To serve

• Mash, or a crusty loaf
• Peas

Method

1. Dry, season, flour. Pat the beef dry, season it, and toss it in the flour. The flour is what thickens the stew, since the slow cooker won't reduce it.

2. Brown in batches. Three small batches in a hot pan with oil, 2 minutes a side, undisturbed. Each batch goes straight into the slow cooker.

3. Soften the veg. Onion, carrot and celery in the same pan for 8 minutes. Garlic for the last minute.

4. Cook out the purée. Tomato purée in, 1 minute until it darkens and smells sweet.

5. Deglaze. Beer in, scrape the base clean, and bubble for 3 minutes. Stir in both stock pots, the water, Worcestershire, bay and thyme. Pour the lot over the beef.

6. Slow cook. Low for 8 hours, or high for 5–6. Don't lift the lid.

7. Mushrooms. Brown them in a dry pan and stir them in for the last 30 minutes, so they stay meaty instead of going slimy.

8. Finish. If it's thin, take the lid off and give it 30 minutes on high. Fish out the bay leaves. Season hard at the end.