Slow Cooking Thursday - Beef & Guinness Stew.

Looking better than it tastes, instead of the other way around for a change. :(

Today's offering is a combination of two recipes from different sources - therefore making it technically my own. lol. This recipe on Taste.Com.Au and another from a free slow cooking recipe book I got from the McCormick site. So here is how I made mine.

Beef & Guinness Stew with Dumplings
800g chuck steak, cubed
2 onions, diced
2 carrots, sliced
1 stick celery, sliced
200g button mushrooms, quarted
375ml Guinness
sachet McCormick Slow Cookers Tomato & Onion Sausages

50g butter, softened,
1 cup SR flour
1/2 cup tasty cheese, grated
1 tbsp dried tarragon
1 tbsp dried basil
2-3 tbsp milk

Brown the beef and onions in a frypan. Put in a slow cooker with all the other vegies. Mix the flavour sachet with the Guinness, and use to deglaze the frypan. Pour on top of everything in the slow cooker, and use a small amount (I used 200ml, but use less if you have a smaller frypan - use as little as possible) of water to deglaze the pan again, because the guinness will leave behind a lovely thick gravy on the edges of the pan. Cook on LOW for 8 hours.

Rub the butter into the flour until crumbly. Add the cheese and herbs and mix through the mix to make a dough. Drop golf ball sized dumplings into the top of the stew 20 minutes before serving.
(photos to follow after dinner time!)
***
Well, here we are. The first real failure of a meal since I started this food blog. No one ate it. The dumplings were doughy and raw still after 20 minutes, and the stew itself was just... slightly wrong. DP couldn't put his finger on it, but something just didn't gel with the rest of the ingredients. I thought it was too spicy. The kids just didn't want to eat it. I think it was the tomato and onion sausages mix. The idea to add that came from the freebie slow cookers cookbook - in which every recipe had a packet of one of the flavours of the new slow cookers sachets. Obviously they are trying to sell more product, and I don't fault them that, but this was not a winner. I may try using the Taste recipe, to see if this is any better with tomato paste instead of a shortcut. Otherwise, this will be a meal that goes in the never make again basket. If anyone out there is willing to take a chance on it, please let me know how it worked out for you!