My husband Dominick is from Savannah, a city whose beauty announces itself via its Georgian homes, cobblestone streets, verdant parks, and live oak trees dripping with silvery Spanish moss. It’s a charming city, to say the least.
It’s also a city that throws the second-largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the country. You could say the event is practically a religion in Savannah. The city shuts down for the festivities—kids even get the day off from school.
The parade traces its roots back to 1824 and has grown to include 280 groups, including bands, families, societies, soldiers, public servants, and floats. Every year on March 17 (except for the last two years—thanks, COVID), residents line the streets of the city’s historic downtown for the parade. They might be drawn by one other factor: Savannah has the largest National Historic Landmark District in the country, covering more than 20 city blocks, and within its boundaries—from River Street to Jones Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard to West Broad Street—you can carry open containers.
I’ve experienced Savannah on St. Patrick’s Day twice—once in my early twenties, and a few years ago with my husband. While I enjoyed the typical drunken frivolity the first time around, the second visit gave me a new appreciation of the event itself. The parade is filled with pageantry, a celebration of Irish culture and, of course, St. Patrick. It’s more than a drinking holiday.
Once again, I found myself in Savannah over St. Patrick’s Day weekend this year, only this time it was coincidence: We’d come to celebrate my mother-in-law’s upcoming birthday. Many of the festivities were already over, but we ran into several people donning green shirts—tourists, we guessed, who weren’t ready to say goodbye to the party, or to this magical city. But eventually we all must return home to our dwellings, to our routines.
Last year, I started cooking Sunday dinner. It’s usually a small affair—me, my husband, and the dog looking on with jealousy. On Sundays, I’m slow and lazy, and usually find my time is best spent in the kitchen, taking a tough piece of meat and turning it into a rich, succulent dish. After just missing out on the main event in Savannah, it seemed fitting to have a mini St. Patrick’s Day celebration at home.
I really can’t think of a better day of the week for a cooking project. And Guinness Pie is a cooking project. But don’t be intimidated—it may take a couple hours to make, but you can think of this dish as the combination of two simpler things: beef stew and pastry.
[Disclosure: Guinness is an underwriter of Good Beer Hunting’s Next Germination series.]
Beef stew is one of the first dishes I cook once cool weather sets in each year. It’s deeply comforting, and it helps that most of the work is done upfront. I find the act of chopping vegetables calming, a form of meditation. Searing the meat requires patience to get the perfect crust, but on Sunday, I have all the time in the world. (You don’t want to skip this step because that crust equals flavor.)
Once that’s done, everything gets thrown back into the pot (I use a heavy-duty Dutch oven) with a few herbs, maybe some tomato paste or Worcestershire sauce, and is topped off with your liquid of choice—chicken stock, beef stock, wine, or, in this case, Guinness Draught. The Dutch oven goes into the main oven, where the heat takes everything in the pot and turns it into the kind of meal that you start thinking about as soon as you wake up. Then, after the stew is ready, it gets transferred to a pie dish, covered in dough, and returned to the oven until it emerges golden-brown.
For the pastry, there are many options, but I’m a woman from the South and biscuits are basically my middle name. I love them slathered in strawberry jam or stuffed with bacon, eggs, and cheese. Or with a piece of fried chicken. And let’s not forget strawberry shortcake, or Cheddar Bay biscuits alongside a plate of seafood.
You get the point—I love biscuits, and I have favorites. A confession: Sometimes I like to grab my biscuits from the freezer section (trust me, they taste like they’re homemade). But when I’m making them myself, there’s only one recipe I use—Carla Hall’s. Her biscuits are flaky, airy and full of buttery flavor. The first time I made them, I knew I wouldn’t make another again.
So, on the first day of spring, still suffused with memories of St. Patrick’s Day, I set to work on my Southern version of Guinness Pie.
Adapted from NYT Cooking
Serves 4
For the beef stew:
1 pound chuck roast, chopped into bite-sized pieces
Kosher salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons flour
6 strips bacon
1 large red onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 pint mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
2 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs rosemary
2 tsp tomato paste
1 cup beef broth
About 2 cups (1 can) Guinness Draught
8 ounces freshly grated cheddar
For the biscuit topping:
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for shaping the dough
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening, at room temperature
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen
1 ½ cups whole-milk buttermilk, cold
1 egg, beaten
Preheat the oven to 375° Fahrenheit.
Season the chuck roast pieces generously with salt and pepper and then toss with flour.
In a large Dutch oven or ovenproof pan with a lid, fry the bacon over medium-low heat. Remove bacon strips and crumble once cool enough to handle, but keep the grease in the pan. Alternatively, add 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil to the pan.
Add the chuck roast pieces to the Dutch oven and sear on each side, about 5-6 minutes total, until a crust forms. Transfer to a plate and leave to rest.
Add the carrots, celery, mushrooms, and garlic to the pan, and any additional oil if needed. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the vegetables soften and the mushrooms have released their liquid, about 15 minutes.
Wrap kitchen twine around rosemary and thyme to make a bouquet garni.
Return chuck roast pieces to pot with bouquet garni, crumbled bacon, and tomato paste.
Add the Guinness; it should just about cover the beef. Cover the pot and put it in the oven for 1 ½ hours.
While the stew cooks, start the biscuit dough. Add the flour to a large bowl: Scoop the flour into a measuring cup and level off with a knife without compacting. Next, add baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
Add shortening to the flour mixture. Using your fingers, coat the shortening in flour, pinching and smearing until the shortening is incorporated. It will look like large crumbs in the bowl.
Place a box grater into the flour mixture. Using the large holes, grate the butter into the flour. Coat the butter in flour, taking care so the butter doesn’t start to melt or become hard to handle.
Make a well in the center of your flour mixture. Pour in most of the buttermilk, and start folding through, adding more if the mixture seems dry. It should be slightly wet when done.
Prep your work area with nonstick cooking spray or a neutral oil and a sprinkle of flour. It should feel velvety to the touch. (Alternatively, I like to use a silicone mat anytime I’m working with dough, which makes it much easier to handle.)
Turn the dough onto your work area and coat the top with flour. Start rolling the dough around from side to side, covering any wet areas with flour until you can easily move the dough without it sticking. Be careful not to add too much flour at this step.
Pat the dough out into a ½-inch-thick rectangle. Fold the dough into thirds like you’re making an omelet. Then, pat it back into a rectangle, about ¾-inch thick. Turn the dough and repeat the folds, adding flour to any sticky spots, and patting back down into a rectangle. Do this a total of four times.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes or until the stew is done.
Remove the stew from the oven and stir. The liquid should be the consistency of thick gravy. If not, set the pan over medium-low heat without the lid and cook, stirring, until the liquid is reduced to your desired consistency. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove the bouquet garni and fold in one half of the cheddar cheese.
Preheat the oven to 450° Fahrenheit.
Carefully transfer the stew to a 9-inch pie pan, and then sprinkle the remaining cheddar cheese on top.
Roll out the biscuit dough so it just fits over the pan. Place over the stew and seal around the edges. Cut three slits in the center to allow steam to escape.
Brush biscuit topping with the beaten egg, and place the pie pan on a baking sheet in case any filling bubbles over. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.
Words + PhotosStephanie Grant
