Beef in beer - how to thicken sauce?

[Dancergirl]

I have some beef in beer cooking away in the slow cooker at the moment.

The sauce looks runny, how do I thicken it? I put some flour in at the start, should I put more in?

Mix it in to a paste with a little bit of cold water then pour it in - take the stew off the boil as it will go lumpy - Mmmmm Stew yum!

Or you can put it in a pan and boil with the lid off to reduce the sauce, next time if you put your meat in a plastic bag with seasoned flour and give a good shake before Browning your meat off it'll thicken as it cooks

Both of the above will work
You can also thicken with corn flour dissolved in a little water. I buy packet soup, onion or mushroom or oxtail. Dissolve some in small amount of water and add to stew a few minutes before it finishes cooking.

Or you could mash a little cornflour to a paste with butter, and then drop little bit of this paste into the sauce. It thickens as the butter melts.

You can also stir mashed potato into a stew to thicken.

Personally though I'd scoop the meat out (meat can go a bit dry and horrible if you boil it) and then boil the liquid really hard until it reduces. Then recombine sauce and meat.

Thanks all, some good tips.

In the end I added a little cornflour in a bit of water. I couldn't be bothered to reduce it down, defeats the object of one pot!

For future reference, would adding Bisto gravy granules do the trick?

You would need quite a few spoonfuls so may be a bit salty? I always use the flour/cornflour method.

For future reference you could add some oats at the start of cooking to make the sauce thicker.

i always fry off the beef, onions, garlic etc first, then put it in the slow cooker. Then I stir in a tbsp or two of flour (I use rice flour because we're gluten free) before adding the stock/beer.

Noooo to bisto, it will just taste of Bisto then.

My mum always added two slices of crustless stale white bread, which mskes the beer gravy perfect. ( it HAS to be white bread, it MUST be crustless, and MUST be stale, not fresh!)