Ingredients
Serves: 4-5
Prep time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 90 minutes
- 600g diced stewing beef
- 4 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 2 carrots, peeled & chopped into chunks
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1/4 leek, sliced
- 1 tbsp plain flour
- 400ml beef stock
- 200ml red wine
- 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
- Salt & pepper
- 5/6 medium sized potatoes
- 2 tbsp melted butter
- Fresh parsley
Method
- Preheat your oven to 170C.
- Place a heavy based pan over a medium/high heat and add half the oil.
- To this add half the seasoned beef pieces and fry until golden brown.
- Repeat until all the beef is seared, place this into your casserole dish and set aside.
- Remember, you're just searing the beef, not cooking it all the way through.
- Into the same pan, add some oil, onions & leeks and cook for a few minutes.
- Next the garlic and carrots, cook for another two minutes.
- To this, add the flour and stir through, pour in the red wine and mix until smooth.
- Top this up with the beef stock and bring to a boil.
- At this point add the thyme and check the sauce for seasoning.
- Pour this into the casserole dish over the seared beef and stir through.
- Slice your peeled potatoes into 1cm slices and arrange, overlapping on top of the beef.
- Brush the potatoes with melted butter and pop a lid on top.
- This goes into the preheated oven and bakes for one hour.
- After one hour, remove the lid and turn the oven up to 200C and cook for a further 30 minutes, this will crisp up the potatoes and give them a gorgeous golden brown colour.
- Sprinkle on some chopped parsley and serve your beef hotpot with a side of buttered green vegetables.
