Cooking with Coronation Street - Bet and Alec's Guinness casserole

(This post was originally posted by Flaming Nora on the Coronation Street Blog January 2018, reposted to this blog with permission.)

All pictures copyright @ConversationStr

Greetings! Here we go with the fourth of our Cooking with Coronation Street blog posts in which we take recipes from this little gem of a book from 1992 and see what they turn out like when cooked at home by Corrie fans.  

Our friends from the Coronation Street podcast - Conversation Street, Gemma and Michael have taken up the cookery challenge again, this time to make Guinness casserole. 

You can follow Conversation Street on Twitter @ConversationStr and Facebook

Michael and Gemma chose to cook Bet and Alec's Guinness Casserole from the Corrie recipe book this time and now, it's over to them both... 
"For week two of our Corrie cooking experience, we decided to tackle Bet and Alec Gilroy’s Guinness casserole. A boozy, meaty dish is not the sort of meal you’d catch the current recovering alcoholic landlord and vegetarian landlady cooking, but it hit the spot on a cold January evening! Just like Betty’s hotpot, it’s simple to make, uses few ingredients, and is a great, traditional dish. 

The most important part of recipe is the Guinness. No other beer will do, not even a pint of Newton and Ridley’s finest. First of all, you must procure 290ml of the stuff, which could leave you with quite a lot left over in the bottle, so here are some ideas to use up the remaining Guinness:

Pour it down the sink
Pour it down your throat
Pour it over a cheating partner or chuck it in the face of a shrieking harpy in the pub
Sell it on for a profit at school (but don’t get caught, Simon)

Another similarity this has with Betty’s hotpot is that you use copious amounts of lard - the Northern climate makes it essential that you grow a thick insulating layer of the stuff across your ribs to keep out the cold, so this is absolutely not negotiable and under no circumstances should you use something sensible like vegetable oil. Fry up your onions in spoonfuls of it and try not to wonder what it’s doing to your arteries. Think of excuses for when Doctor Gaddas confronts you about your cholesterol levels. (She’s a pushover anyway, just ask Eva.) Then you chuck in big chunks of flour-dredged beef, let it all brown, and pour in the Guinness. Cover and bake for a few hours, and you’re ready to eat yourself into a coma. 

Guinness Casserole, serves 2

Lard, and plenty of it
2 large onions, thinly sliced
450g stewing or braising beef
Seasoned flour
1/2 pint or 290ml Guinness
1 beef stock cube
Bay leaf

Preheat the oven to 160C, gas mark 3

In your casserole pan, fry the onions with the lard until browned. Make sure to keep squinting into the pan as you stir so your face gets the full force of the noxious onion fumes and you can then stride around the house with tears streaming down your face, letting everyone know how hard cooking is and what a sacrifice you’re making just so they can have dinner. 

Coat the meat in the flour and stir it all around until you have disgusting meat gummy fingers. Don’t lick them - it’s gross. 

Brown the meat in the pan in batches and then add the onions back in. You might want to chuck in more lard; it can’t hurt you now. 

Pour in the Guinness and add the stock cube and bay leaf. Bring to the boil and then cover. 

Bake in the oven for at least three hours, or until the bitter flavour of the Guinness has mellowed. 

Serve with mash, roasted potatoes, or if you’re watching your figure like Rosie, masses of green veggies. 

Keep your eyes peeled for the next of our Cooking with Coronation Street blog posts coming very soon.

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Tvor @tvordlj on Twitter