Winter slow cooker beef braise with redcurrant port sauce

 
by Karen Burns-Booth

20 minutes, plus 4-8 hours braising, depending on what kind of oven you use
This slow cooker Irish beef recipe is everything you’d want from a warming comfort food dish. Port and redcurrant sauce gives a sweet yet intense finish, which matches beautifully with the meltingly tender chuck steak. Though this dish benefits from being made in a slow cooker, Karen also offers instructions for a conventional oven so no one has to miss out.

Ingredients
Braised chuck steak
750g of Irish beef chuck steak, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 5cm chunks
2 large onions, peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely diced
4 tbsp of ruby port, or tawny port
6 tbsp of redcurrant jelly
150ml of beef stock
salt
pepper
Dumplings
225g of self-raising flour
110g of shredded vegetable suet, or grated frozen butter
salt
pepper
To serve
redcurrant jelly
mixed vegetables, steamed
mashed potatoes, or champ

1
Turn your slow cooker on to the high setting, or preheat oven to 150°C/gas mark 2
2
Place all of the ingredients, except the dumpling mixture, into the slow cooker and cook for 6–8 hours. To cook in a conventional oven, place the ingredients in a roasting tin or casserole dish, cover with tin foil (or place a lid on a casserole dish) and cook for 4 hours
3
1 hour before the end of the cooking time, make the dumplings by mixing the suet into the flour. Season and mix to a soft dough with gradual additions of water
4
Shape the dumplings into 6–8 balls, drop on top of the casserole in the slow cooker, replace the lid and cook for a further hour until it is ready to serve. In cooking in a conventional oven, add the dumplings to the dish 45 minutes before the end of cooking.
5
Serve immediately with your choice of seasonal greens and some mashed potato or champ
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Recipe courtesy of those lovely people at Great British Chefs, for this recipe an more delicious stew ideas’s please visit their website: www.greatbritishchefs.com