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Beef Stew with Dumplings
Aitchbone, weighing 5 lbs. 4 cups potatoes, cut in 1/4 inch slices Turnip, Carrot } 2/3 cup each, cut in half-inch cubes 1/2 small onion, cut in thin slices 1/4 cup flour Salt Pepper Wipe meat, remove from bone, cut in one and one-half inch cubes, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dredge with flour. Cut some of the fat in small pieces and try out in frying-pan. Add meat and stir constantly, that the surface may be quickly seared; when well browned, put in kettle, and rinse frying-pan with boiling water, that none of the goodness may be lost. Add to meat remaining fat, and bone sawed in pieces; cover with boiling water and boil five minutes, then cook at a lower temperature until meat is tender (time required being about three hours). Add carrot, turnip, and onion, with salt and pepper the last hour of cooking. Parboil potatoes five minutes, and add to stew fifteen minutes before taking from fire. Remove bones, large pieces of fat, and then skim. Thicken with one-fourth cup flour, diluted with enough cold water to pour easily. Pour in deep hot platter, and surround with dumplings. Remnants of roast beef are usually made into a beef stew; the meat having been once cooked, there is no necessity of browning it. If gravy is left, it should be added to the stew.
A straightforward braise from the era when the butcher sold you the bone along with the meat. Two things carry it: hard searing at the start, and a liquid that never returns to a boil after the first five minutes.
- AitchboneThe aitchbone is the hip or rump bone end of the round, sold whole with meat attached. A 5 lb piece is not a standard supermarket cut now; ask for beef shin, chuck or a boneless rump with a few sawn marrow or knuckle bones added, aiming for about 3 to 3 1/2 lb of trimmed meat.
- "Try out"To try out fat is to render it slowly in the pan until the solids are crisp and clear fat is left. Discard the browned scraps before adding the meat, or they will scorch during the sear.
- Sear in batchesThe instruction to stir constantly works only if the pan is not crowded. Floured beef in a full pan steams rather than browns; do it in two or three lots over high heat.
- Boil five minutes, then stop boilingThis is the hinge. After the initial five-minute boil, hold the pot at a bare simmer, around 180 to 190F, with the surface barely moving. Sustained boiling squeezes the muscle fibres and gives dry, stringy meat no matter how long it cooks.
- Three hours is a guideDepending on the cut, tenderness arrives anywhere from 2 1/2 to 4 hours. Test with a fork rather than a clock. A 325F oven with the lid on holds a steadier temperature than a burner if you have a heavy pot.
- Vegetable timingAn hour is a long time for cubed carrot and turnip in modern varieties; 30 to 40 minutes is closer for pieces that keep their shape. The potatoes need no parboiling if you cut them 1/4 inch thick, but they will want 20 minutes rather than 15.
- ThickeningThe final 1/4 cup flour is a slurry, not a roux. Whisk it smooth with cold water, stir it in, then let the stew simmer a full two or three minutes so the flour cooks out and loses its raw taste.
- The dumplingsNo dumpling formula is given here; a cross-reference to a dumpling recipe elsewhere in the book is implied. Any standard 2 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder dough, steamed 12 to 15 minutes under a tight lid, suits it.
- YieldNo yield is given; the quantities will serve about six. Many cooks find it tastes better reheated the next day.
Household cookery of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was organised around the whole carcass, and the aitchbone is a relic of that: a big, awkward, bone-in cut from the hip that was cheap because it demanded long cooking. The instruction to rinse the frying-pan with boiling water "that none of the goodness may be lost" is the period's characteristic thrift, and the closing note about remnants of roast beef shows the same economy: stew was where Sunday's joint went on Tuesday. The dumplings belong to the English suet-and-flour dumpling tradition, lightened with baking powder, which was widely available and reasonably reliable by the later nineteenth century, and they helped stretch a modest amount of meat across a full table.