Limbourgian Beer Stew

For those of you interested in authentic Limbourgian Belgian cuisine! This is a popular local dish in the South of the Netherlands, as well as the Flemish part of Belgium. The meat becomes wonderfully soft by soaking it in vinegar overnight. I know it sounds odd, but be ready for an authentic European-style dish and you will love it! Some of the ingredients might be difficult to get in the U.S. Adding the spiced bread, the sandwich and rubbing the meat with flour adds a great taste to the stew and thickens the fluid. Tastes great with fries.

• Ready In: 3 hrs 15 mins
• Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 600  g beef steaks
• 250  g onions, roughly chopped
• 2  slices  peperkoek (spiced bread)
• 1  slice  bread, spread with a liberal amount of appelstroop (thick apple syrup)
• 25  g butter
• 1⁄2 cup flour
•  salt and pepper

• Marinade

• 200  ml vinegar (usually apple vinegar, though white wine vinegar works very well also)
• 150  ml dark beer (Belgian)
• 2  cloves
• 2  bay leaves
• 10 -15  peppercorns
•  salt and pepper

Directions

1. Rub both sides of the meat steaks with salt and pepper. Cut in pieces (about 1x1 inch).
2. Make marinade with vinegar, beer, bay leaves, cloves and pepper corns, add salt and more pepper according to taste. Put the meat in the marinade and leave in fridge for 24 hours.
3. Fry onion in butter, take out of pan.
4. Dry meat with paper towel, rub flour onto the meat. Fry the meat in butter until slightly brown. Put the fried onions back in the pan.
5. Take bay leaves, pepper corns and cloves out of marinade. Now put marinade in the pan until meat is covered with fluid.
6. Put 2 slices of spiced bread in with the ingredients in the pan. Also add the sandwich spread with appelstroop. (I cut these in 4 pieces first). Mix into meat/onion mixture.
7. Let simmer on low fire (the fluid should barely cook) for a couple of hours. The dish is done when the meat almost falls apart.
8. Serve with fries.