Beef & Guinness Pie with Buttery Pastry

Ingredients

• 1 kg braising beef, cut into 3cm chunks
• 400 ml beef stock
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 2 carrots, cut into 2cm pieces
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• salt and black pepper
• 2 onions, finely diced
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 330 ml Guinness stout
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 egg, beaten, for egg wash
• 500 g ready-rolled all-butter shortcrust pastry
• Buttered peas and greens, to serve
• Dressed green salad, to serve

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C fan. Pat the beef dry with kitchen paper — water means steam, and steam means no browning. Toss the chunks in the flour and season generously with salt and pepper, making sure every piece is coated. Heat the oil in a large ovenproof casserole over high heat until it shimmers.
2. Brown the beef in three batches, 3–4 minutes per batch, turning until each piece has a deep mahogany crust. Don't crowd the pan — all at once and the pan floods, water comes out, and you've boiled the meat instead of browning it. Lift each batch out onto a plate.
3. Drop the heat to medium. Add the onions and carrots to the same pan and fry for 7 minutes, stirring now and then, until the onions are translucent and starting to catch at the edges. Stir in the garlic and tomato puree and cook for 60–90 seconds, just until the garlic is fragrant and the puree darkens to brick red. Watch it — burnt garlic turns the whole filling bitter.
4. Pour in the Guinness and let it bubble hard for a minute, scraping every sticky brown bit off the base of the pan with a wooden spoon. That fond is your flavour. Add the beef stock, Worcestershire sauce, thyme and bay — the stock and stout together break down the tomato puree and pull the whole braise into a glossy gravy rather than a thin, tinny sauce. Return the beef and any resting juices and bring to a gentle simmer.
5. Lid on, slide into the oven. Braise for 2.5–3 hours, until the beef yields completely to the back of a spoon and the sauce coats it in a dark, syrupy gloss. Fish out the thyme stems and bay leaves. Taste and season — adjust now, not at the table. The Guinness brings bitterness, so it usually wants another decent pinch of salt. Cool the filling completely before it meets pastry; warm filling melts the butter in the lid and you get a sad, soggy collapse.
6. Turn the oven up to 200°C fan. Tip the cold filling into a large pie dish. Lay the pastry over the top, press it firmly to the rim, and crimp the edges with a fork. Brush generously with beaten egg and cut a small slit in the centre so steam can escape rather than blow the lid off.
7. Bake for 30–35 minutes until the pastry is deeply golden, puffed and burnished — the egg wash should look almost lacquered.
8. Rest the pie for 5 minutes so the filling settles. Bring it to the table whole, crack plenty of black pepper over the lid, scatter the chopped chives across the top, and pile the buttered peas or mash alongside each serving.