Preparing Vegetables for Irish Beef Stew

Hi, my name is John Conway and I am the chef at Old Brogue restaurant in Great Falls and we are here today to prepare a traditional Irish beef stew. We are going to start preparing the vegetables. We have onions, carrots, leeks and celery so, I am just going to take a leek, I am sure you had to prepare it and an onion, some carrots, some celery. I do have some prepared already. So, I will just give you a demonstration on how we do it. Just taking off the top of the leek and we want to take off some of the green, not at all, we want to lose at least an inch because it tends to be very bitter. So, we want to take the leek and we want to cut it right down the centre and then we want to cut it again in quarters. This is a root vegetable so, it is very important that you do cut it in fours and I am just going to wash it in the sink. So, by taking the leeks, we are just going to rinse them under cold running water and you want to make sure that you get right in between each leaf. Again, it is a root vegetable so it does grow in the soil, so they tend to be very, very mucky. But this one does not seem to be too bad. It is fine. So, we want to give it a good shake. Then, we will take it right to the table and then I will chop it. Now, we have the leeks here and we are just going to dice them up. For this recipe we are using three leeks, one onion, large onion, two carrots and three sticks of celery for this recipe. We have three pounds of beef tenderloin tips. So, I have a large onion here and we are going to cut down the centre and then we are just going to dice it up. Be very careful when you are preparing vegetables make sure you have a sharp knife. Not having sharp knife can cause some injury. Now, carrots, same sized dice, carrots and now we are just going to take some celery, three sticks of celery. We are just going to run those under cold running water.

So, now we just washed the celery and I am just removing the very tips and the very ends, turn up there. This is a great dish for - well, this recipe is a great dish for a family of 4-6 people and it is easy to do. It is just a matter of preparing all your vegetables, preparing your beef and it just all goes into one pot. Now, we will just prepare some potatoes for the dish. We are just taking the potatoes, I washed the potatoes and I am just putting them in half and then I am going to do it in quarters. We do not add the potatoes to the dish until the meat becomes tender because if we cook all the beef with the vegetables and the potatoes all at one time, there is not going to be any potatoes left at end of the dish. We are using eight potatoes this size, cut into four. As soon as we are done with the potatoes, we are going to get on to start braising the beef.