Saturday, September 12, 2009

Experimental Cookery 'Tuesday' #51: Beef & Guinness Stew with Dumplings

This is what should have been a very nice meal, utterly destroyed by faulty instructions. I followed the book to the letter, and when the stew went into the over it looked fantastic. Half an hour before it was supposed to be finished, though, I found it had completely dried out, welded itself to the pan, and was almost entierely unrecoverable.

Fundamentally, the problem is that there just wasn't enough liquid for the cook time and temperature. This one either needs some water added, or double the tomatoes and Guinness, or to cook for less time. As it is, it cannot be used.

So, that's a rather emphatic 1-0 against in the Stews chapter. Next week, I'm doing a chicken & white wine stew with a pastry lid. Worryingly, the method is exactly the same. That said, the cook time is only half of today's effort, so that might make all the difference.

Epic Fail.

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