I never had beef stew growing up — or at least not the American kind you see on those Campbell’s Chunky Soup labels. The closest thing my Ukrainian immigrant mother ever made was a flour-thickened sauce concoction she called goulash — though it barely resembled the Hungarian classic given the total absence of paprika. I learned how to make it myself when I was 16 and had to cook the family dinner for six months to earn my first pair of contact lenses — a sentence of culinary servitude that soured me on all the Eastern European fare I learned to cook.
Beef was a rarity during the 16 years that I spent in Kiev after the fall of the Soviet Union — farmers who were poor under Communism became even poorer after its collapse. They didn’t have the luxury of raising cattle to adulthood. Markets had no beef, and the abundance of free-range veal and pork gave no reason to stew anything. Tender meats toughen with long cooking.
So when relatives gave my husband and me some mutton from their Virginia sheep farm a few Christmases ago, the package of stew meat stumped me. Fortunately, they also included a stack of recipe cards, including one for Emeril Lagasse’s Mutton Stew with Bacon and Beer. Beer adds an earthy, toasty flavor to savory dishes, and bacon can never hurt anything, so it sounded like a winner.
I made it on one of those cold winter nights perfect for hours of cooking. Following the instructions — brown the meat, sauté the vegetables, add liquid, and simmer for an hour and a half — gave fine results. But it bothered me that Emeril said to thicken the stew with flour at the end. Though a stewing newbie myself, I felt that it was cheating and too much like Goulash à la Mom. A good stew ought to thicken of its own natural goodness, and the only flour you need is a little bit to absorb moisture from the surface of the meat.