Beer-braised Beef

I love a good slow cooker meal.  I was searching for a recipe that would use the top round beef I bought on sale a few months ago.  Enter: beer-braised beef.  This recipe calls for light beer, I think we used miller lite.  I honestly think that it would be better with a darker beer, more like a lager for more flavor. 

This was OK. We ate it the first night begrudgingly and then added so much hot sauce the second night that you could really only taste hot sauce.  It just didn't have enough of a flavor punch for us.  Instead of serving this over potatoes, as suggested in the recipe, we served it over brown rice.  It just seemed to make better sense (and other reviewers seem to agree).  It is a very easy recipe though and just because we didn't like it doesn't mean that you won't. 

Recipe by Cooking Light Fresh Food Fast, Oxmoor House, April 2009

Prep Time: 4 minutes
Cook Time: 8 hours, 7 minutes
Stand: 10 minutes
Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

Ingredients

• 1  cup  refrigerated prechopped onion
• Cooking spray
• 1  pound  boneless top round steak, trimmed
• 1  (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano, undrained
• 1/2  cup  light beer
• 2  tablespoons  molasses
• 1/4  teaspoon  salt

Preparation

1. Place onion in a 3- to 3 1/2-quart electric slow cooker coated with cooking spray.
2. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat; coat pan with cooking spray. Add steak; cook 3 minutes on each side or until browned. Place steak over onion in cooker; pour tomatoes and beer over steak. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 hours or until steak is very tender.
3. Shred steak with 2 forks in slow cooker; stir in molasses and salt. Let steak stand 10 minutes before serving.

Nutritional Information

Calories: 265 (28% from fat)

Fat: 8g (sat 3.1g,mono 3.4g,poly 0.3g)

Protein: 25.5g

Carbohydrate: 20.4g

Fiber: 1.5g

Cholesterol: 64mg

Iron: 3.7mg

Sodium: 514mg

Calcium: 64mg