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.
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.
‘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.
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.
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
- 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
- 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
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.
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.
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.
