Followed the recipe exactly. Served over lightly buttered egg noodles with a simple lettuce salad and ice tea. Now it's more like a beef 'n noodles w/ beer recipe than a traditional beef stew. The beef-onion mixture was sweet, but not overpoweringly so. Excellent! My choice of dark beer was the Mexican Modelo dark. I was concerned after approx 8 hours in the slow cooker that it might 'melt' and it was 'silky and satin' smooth - the beef perfectly tender. I highly recommend this dish!

This is an old Flemish recipe, normally called Carbonnade. The trick is to brown the onions very dark, to a point right before burning, to get a good caramelization. The beer must be one of the really dark beers. If you use a beer with a distinct hops note, you will ruin the stew. It's best to invest the money and buy a dark Belgian beer. Do not add other vegetables to this stew. It's quite delicious if you follow these rules.

I put other things in this because onions and beef didnt sound appealing to me, so I added carrots and potatoes. I also added garlic to the meat when I cooked it and added 1/2 tsp. cayenne. I thought that there were to many onions and it was to sweet for beef stew. My husband loved it but I may try adding tomatoes next time and some other seasonings.

I made this stew for the first time about 6 years ago for my family for Christmas Eve at my house. My wife's family really doesn't like ""interesting"" food at all, and when they heard I was making a ""beer"" stew and a regular beef stew they all said they would eat the beef stew. I didn't tell them which stew was which pot, and they all went right for the Flemish stew. It was gone very fast, and I have made it each year ever since. I have now had to double the recipe to make sure that everyone will get some. I have added mushrooms, and carrots to the pot and it also tastes great. This is one of my favorites. Bill Legg, Clarkston, WA

My roommates and I are trying to make Sunday dinner a home cooked meal evening. Tonight was my night and I wanted to make a beef stew, but needed a recipe that didn't have tomatoes in it because of health issues. This stew was really easy to make. I added garlic and carrots though, because without it it's really just onions, beef and beer. I made this in my crock pot while I was home, so it was on low for the first hour, then on high for about three hours, and finally back to low for the last half hour while I prepared egg noodles. The end result was absolutely delicious!!! It was a big hit on a cold fall night. My roommates agreed we're bookmarking this recipe and using it again soon.