Greek Stifado Recipe (Beef and Shallot Stew with Cinnamon)

Stifado is defined by its onions, not by its meat. The proportion is roughly one to one by weight, which means a kilo of beef gets a kilo of small onions, and when it is done the onions have gone sweet and translucent and are as much the dish as the meat is.

The other defining elements are vinegar and warm spice. Red wine vinegar gives it a sharpness no other Greek stew has, and cinnamon, clove and bay give it the aromatic character that makes it unmistakably Greek rather than French.

Rabbit is arguably the more traditional meat and hare more traditional still. Beef is what most people make now and works perfectly well. Whichever you use, this needs two and a half hours and cannot be hurried.

Key preparation steps

1. Brown the meat hard, in batches, and set aside.
2. Deglaze with vinegar and let the harshness cook off.
3. Add the whole peeled onions and do not stir them much.
4. Simmer very gently for two and a half hours until the sauce is dark and thick.

Why the onions go in whole

Because they are meant to be eaten as onions, not to dissolve into a sauce base. Whole small onions or shallots hold their shape through a long cook and turn sweet and silky rather than disappearing.

Peel them but leave the root end intact, which holds the layers together. Do not chop, halve or slice them.

Once they are in, stir as little as possible. Shake the pot by the handles instead. Stirring breaks the onions apart and you lose the whole character of the dish.

Peeling a kilo of small onions without weeping

Drop them into boiling water for one minute, then straight into cold water. The skins slip off between your fingers afterwards with almost no effort.

This is worth doing. Peeling a kilo of small onions by knife takes half an hour and is genuinely unpleasant.

Pickling onions, small shallots or banana shallots cut into two or three chunks all work. Aim for pieces around 3 cm.

The vinegar, and how much

Red wine vinegar, about 100 ml for a kilo of meat, added early and boiled hard for a minute or two so the raw sharpness cooks off.

It sounds like a lot and it reduces into something rounded rather than sour. That underlying acidity is what makes stifado stifado, and cutting it back gives you a generic beef stew.

Some cooks add a spoonful of honey or a few currants alongside it, which sharpens the sweet and sour balance. That is a Peloponnesian habit and it is very good.

The spicing, and what to serve it with

A cinnamon stick, four or five whole cloves, two bay leaves, a few allspice berries and a strip of orange peel. Whole spices rather than ground, and fished out at the end.

The aim is aromatic warmth sitting behind the meat, not a spiced stew. Ground cinnamon in this quantity would be overpowering, which is why whole is specified.

Serve with plain rice, buttered noodles, or a puree of potato or celeriac. Something plain, because the sauce is doing all the work. Bread is essential either way.

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