OK so this is the easiest and most delicious beef casserole I've ever made. The recipe came from the Scotch Beef marketing board, so I suppose they know what they're talking about.
Ingredients
- 25g of pearl barley
- 675g of lean Scotch beef braising steak.
- ½ a swede (the orangey-coloured root vegetable, which seems to go under many pseudonyms)
- 1 leek
- 5 baby carrots
- 250g of haggis (I used vegetarian haggis - you can also try black pudding)
- 12 button mushrooms
- 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
- 1 tablespoon of tomato puree
- 275ml of dark stout or other flavoursome beer (I used Guinness)
- 300ml of beef stock
- 2 tablespoonfuls of horseradish sauce
- A generous grind or five of black pepper
Method
- Put the pearl barley into a bowl and cover with water. Leave it to soak while you're preparing everything else (I think it might need to be longer - but to be honest I forgot to do this, and just put the barley in dry, and it turned out to be fine. But that was probably just lucky).
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Cut the steak into little chunks.
- Peel the swede and cut it into little chunks.
- Cut the leek into chunks.
- Peel the carrots.
- Take the skin off the haggis and cut it into chunks.
- Drain the water from the pearl barley.
- Put all the ingredients into a large casserole dish and mix together.
- Bake in the oven for 1 and a ½ to 2 hours (or longer) until the meat is tender. Put a lid on the dish if it looks like it's drying out.
- At this point it's done, but all a little al dente for me. If you want really falling-apart meat, turn the oven down to 150°C and bake for another hour or two.
- Serve with mashed swede, parsnips and potatoes.
