Beef and Stout Pie: How to Make an Irish Pub Classic at Home

Beef and Stout Pie: How to Make an Irish Pub Classic at Home
You can make these hearty pot pies in any size container you like; just cut the crust to fit, and make sure to cut slits into the top to let steam escape. Jennifer McGruther
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With St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, you’ll find all sorts of Irish American foods popping up on menus. There’s the classic boiled dinner of corned beef and cabbage, and buttered soda bread with its tender, biscuit-like crumb. Added to these wholesome traditions, you’ll find decidedly unorthodox, but popular treats such as green-tinted shamrock shakes and clover-shaped cookies. And it goes without saying, of course, that there will be plenty of beer (colored green or not).

While you might want to drink your fill this year, I’d recommend adding it to the stew pot instead. There’s another Irish-inspired supper that’s worth making: beef and stout pie. You’ll find a house version in almost every pub in Ireland.

The dish starts as a hearty stew, dotted with beef and root vegetables made tender by a long, slow simmer in a mix of beer, broth, and thyme. You could stop there—or top it with a layer of crisp, buttery pastry crust to make a pie. The result is a revelation: Your spoon cuts through the delicate, golden crust to reveal the rich, dark stew that lies within.

You'll find a house version of this hearty pie in nearly every pub in Ireland. (BBA Photography/Shutterstock)
You'll find a house version of this hearty pie in nearly every pub in Ireland. BBA Photography/Shutterstock

Made for Drinking—or Cooking

Stout beer is a black beer with a bitter edge and heady notes of coffee and dark chocolate. Roasted malt and barley give the brew its dark color and robust flavor, while hops lends a distinct bitterness. The flavors partner well with both beef and sweet, earthy root vegetables.

You’d likely recognize Guinness, the best-selling stout beer, which has been brewed in Dublin since the mid-18th century. Guinness brews roughly 850 million liters of beer each year, exporting much of it. There are other delicious Irish stouts to choose from, too, including Beamish, which is made with barley, wheat, and hops.

Stout's bitter edge and notes of coffee, dark chocolate, and roasted barley pair well with both beef and sweet, earthy root vegetables. (Kirill Z/Shutterstock)
Stout's bitter edge and notes of coffee, dark chocolate, and roasted barley pair well with both beef and sweet, earthy root vegetables. Kirill Z/Shutterstock

‘Medieval Tupperware’ to Modern Meat Pie

Packing meat and vegetables into a crust is a long-standing tradition in the British Isles. Thick pastry, typically made with beef tallow, acted to both contain and preserve foods, which proved handy when you needed to prepare food for traveling.

In some of the earliest versions, cooks would prepare crusts that were several inches thick, fill them with stews or braised meat and vegetables, and then cover them with a lid of pastry. This type of pastry was called a coffyn, meaning box, and it acted as a sort of medieval Tupperware. When dinnertime arrived, you’d remove the lid to the coffyn, eat the stew within it, and return the pastry to the kitchen either to be given to servants or to be filled again and reused. In this way, pastry acted less as a functional food and more as a cooking vessel, similar to a modern-day glass casserole or baking dish.

With time, and the increased accessibility of bakeware and cooking implements, people abandoned the thick-walled pastry they had once used in favor of thinner, more delicate versions that were also easier and more pleasant to eat. The packaging changed, but the essence of meat pie remained.

You can make a good meat pie as you would a fruit pie, lining a pie tin with a sheet of pastry, filling it, and then topping it with a second sheet of pastry before baking it all together. This works well for beef and stout pie, but one of my favorite ways to bake a meat pie is to fill a pot with stew and layer it with a single sheet of pastry on top. It’s less complicated than fussing with two crusts. Either way, make sure to cut slits in the top crust to allow steam to escape as the pie cooks; otherwise, your crust can turn soggy.

Layers of Flavor

To make a beef and stout pie, you’ll start by dredging beef stew meat in seasoned flour and frying it up. Bacon fat works well for this purpose, and lends a delicious smoky flavor, but any neutral-tasting cooking oil is fine, too. Then you’ll add your broth and stout, and let the beef simmer until tender. The trick is to add the vegetables toward the end of cooking, rather than at the beginning, so that there’s still a little life to them when you dive into your pie.

As the stew cooks, you can prepare your shortcrust with flour, butter, oats for a little texture, and cream for some richness. It comes together quickly in a food processor.

Top the stew with the crust, transfer it to the oven, and let it bake until crisp. It’s a delicious, hearty combination, and one that celebrates some of the best flavors you’ll find in traditional Irish cookery.

Beef and Stout Pot Pie

Beef and root vegetables simmer with stout beer and fresh thyme to make a rich, gorgeous stew. Start on the stovetop to brown the meat, then let it slowly simmer away in the oven. Once the meat is tender and the liquid has reduced to a thick, rich gravy, you’ll top it with a flaky, buttery oat crust enriched with a splash of fresh cream. Together, the two make a hearty and satisfying supper inspired by traditional Irish beef and stout pies.

Serves 8

For the Filling
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
  • 2 pounds beef stew meat
  • 2 tablespoons bacon fat or a neutral cooking oil
  • 2 cups stout beer
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 medium celeriac, peeled and diced
  • 2 medium parsnips, peeled and diced
  • 3 medium carrots, peeled and diced
  • 2 medium yellow onions, diced
  • 2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
For the Pastry
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
  • 1/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
  • 3/4 cup cold butter, diced
  • 1/4 cup cold heavy cream, plus additional for brushing the pastry
Prepare the filling: Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F, with a rack in the middle.

Whisk the flour, salt, and pepper together in a large mixing bowl. Toss in the stew meat, stirring with a wooden spoon until each piece is well-coated with the seasoned flour.

Spoon the bacon fat into a Dutch oven set over medium-high heat. When the fat melts, toss in the stew meat and brown it on all sides, about 5 minutes per side. Using a wooden spoon, scrape any brown bits from the bottom of the pot, and then pour in the beer, broth, and Worcestershire sauce. Cover the pot and set it on the middle rack of your oven where it should cook, undisturbed, for 1 1/2 hours.

Open the oven, lift the lid off the pot, and stir in the vegetables and thyme. Let them simmer uncovered for another 1 hour, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender and the liquid thickened.

Meanwhile, prepare the pastry: Dump the flour, oats, and cold butter together in a food processor equipped with the dough attachment. Pulse until the mixture resembles cornmeal. Then slowly pour the cream in through the feeder tube, while pulsing, until the mixture forms a smooth, uniform dough.

Dump the dough out onto a floured surface. Shape the dough into a disc, wrap with parchment paper, and set it in the fridge to chill for at least 1 hour.

Assembling the pie: When the stew is ready, pour it into a 2-quart round baking dish or souffle dish (or your serving vessels of choice).

Turn up the heat of the oven to 375 degrees F.

Remove the pastry from the fridge. Working on a floured surface, roll it out into a circle about 1/3-inch thick and large enough to cover your dish with an overlap of about 1 inch.

Arrange the crust over the stew and crimp the edges. Brush the top of the pastry crust with a bit of cream. With a paring knife, cut four 2-inch slits into the top of the pastry to allow for venting as the pie bakes.

Bake the pie for 30 to 45 minutes, or until the crust is cooked through and golden brown. Serve warm.

This recipe originally appeared on Nourished Kitchen and is reprinted with permission of the author.
Jennifer McGruther
Jennifer McGruther
Author
Jennifer McGruther, NTP, is a nutritional therapy practitioner, herbalist, and the author of three cookbooks, including “Vibrant Botanicals.” She’s also the creator of NourishedKitchen.com, a website that celebrates traditional foodways, herbal remedies, and fermentation. She teaches workshops on natural foods and herbalism, and currently lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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