Beer Braised Beef with Onion Dumplings

This is the first recipe from the Beekman cookbook that we had to add to because the flavor garnered by the recipe wasn't enough.

There's two parts to this recipe: the beef stew and the onion dumplings.

I'm not a red meat eater myself, but fortunately the rest of my friends who were there are. I did eat some of the dumplings though, and they're awesome.

How the beef is cooked in this recipe here is closer to what we actually did to spice up our beef. (Not the colcannon part.)

Here's the beef after we browned it.

There it is in the pot. I'm not sure why it looks so orange. It's not that orange when you actually make it. It's more brown.

We had to add many spices to the stew. I tried some of the broth before we added things, and you could barely taste anything. I was surprised since any of the other recipes we've made were really flavorful.

The onion dumplings however, were absolutely wonderful in every way. 

Dumpling Ingredients:

6 tbsps unsalted butter, melted

1/3c finely chopped onion

1/4c buttermilk*

2 tbsps chopped fresh dill

1c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2c bread crumbs

*For buttermilk, I just take one cup of milk, add one tablespoon of vinegar to it, and mix it together. It works as a simple substitute.

Saute the onions in one tablespoon of the melted butter until they're tender, which should take about five minutes. Transfer this to a small bowl and stir in the buttermilk, dill, and two more tablespoons of the melted butter. 

In a medium bowl, mix together the dry ingredients except the bread crumbs. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. Then mix until everything is moist. 

In a separate bowl, mix the remaining melted butter with the bread crumbs. Take the dumpling mixture and, using a tablespoon, create a rounded ball of the batter. Drop this is in the crumbs and roll until coated. You should make about twelve dumplings with this. 

These dumplings will be dropped in the stew while it is cooking, and they should be in there twenty minutes before you're ready to serve the stew.

Here are our dumplings in the stew.

And here everything is, all cooked and plated to be served.

So, as I said before, the beef stew needed a lot of spices to give it more flavor, but once we did, my friends seemed to really like it. 

My mom made a similar stew when I was younger, except without dumplings. Those are the best part mom, so what's up with that? Hmmm?

Not that my mom will read this. She's not exactly skilled with the internet.