Beef and Beer Stew

My sissy and b-i-l came over for dinner the night before Thanksgiving - it was super windy and cold, and I wanted to make something completely different than the turkey meal everyone was having the next day; found this recipe in a Real Simple cookbook and pretty much followed the recipe until the end, although I added carrots to the stew because I like them. Oh, and they called for 4 onions thickly sliced but I knew Dave wasn't going to like that so I reduced it to just one onion and diced it pretty small.

I, naturally, forgot to take a picture of the stew when it was done,
this is day two leftovers and the thick gravy was soaked up by sitting
overnight in fridge -  still SO good!

My grocery store had both precut stew meat and bottom round, I asked the butcher which he would use and he said because the stew meat is a mixture of different kinds of beef he would go with the bottom round since that's what the recipe called for - side note, rump roast and bottom round are the same thing according the meat guy. I did not cut the roast up into bite-sized pieces, leaving them in big portions made the browning step very easy.

6 T. olive oil
4 slices bacon, diced
2 1/2 pounds rump roast or bottom round, cut into 6 equal portions, or 2 1/2 pounds precut stew meat
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper
1 small bag baby carrots
1 medium onion, chopped
1 t. garlic, minced
1 14.5oz. can diced tomatoes
1 12oz bottles dark beer (I used Guiness stout)
2 T. brown sugar
1 t. dried thyme
1 T. minced fresh rosemary
1 1/2 pounds baby gold potatoes, cut in half

1/2 stick butter
1/4 c. flour
2 cups beef broth

Heat oven to 350'. Place the oil and bacon in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Fry the bacon until crisp and transfer it to a paper towel-lined plate; set aside. Season the beef with salt and pepper. Add some of the beef to the pot, being careful not to crowd the pieces. Cook until browned on all sides. Transfer to the plate with the cooked bacon; set aside. Repeat with the remaining beef. Add the carrots, onions and garlic to the pot and cook until the onions are softened, about 5 minutes. Spoon off and discard any excess fat. Return the beef and bacon to the pot and add the tomatoes, beer, brown sugar, thyme, and rosemary. Bring to a simmer. Cover and transfer to the oven. Cook until the meat is falling apart, about 2 hours. Add the potatoes and cook until tender, about 30 minutes more.

notes: After 2 hours the meat was still in very large pieces so I carefully broke them up into smaller sized chunks and let it cook another 30 minutes before adding the potatoes. When the potatoes were done (at this point it baked for about 3 hours total and the meat was then falling apart, maybe I didn't need to make the big portions smaller) I removed the pot from the oven but didn't like the consistency - the broth was too thin and runny....this is a little bit of extra work but totally worth it so stay with me here :). I removed all the beef and veggies from the broth and set it aside. In a separate saucepan make a simple gravy by melting the butter, stir in the flour and cook for a couple minutes until it starts to turn a little brown. Slowly add the beef broth, stirring constantly, until it's thickened and bubbly. Put the Dutch oven with the stew broth over medium heat, once hot slowly whisk in the gravy. Add the beef and veggies back to the Dutch oven, turn the heat down to low and let simmer until ready to serve. Thickening the base up helped a ton and Dave said this was the best beef stew he's ever had!