I made a big batch of potato soup last night for this exact reason! Got some thick bread to go with it too!

Your stew looks awesome af, and I'm saving that recipe.

Let's hope that we're enjoying these from warm houses with functioning pipes throughout tomorrow!

There's no power grid to blame, but our condensate line froze, so no furnace heat for a while, yay.

IPA is for cleaning hubcaps

This recipe not only calls for Guinness, but also chocolate and espresso! I almost want to make it, but I'm scared it's gonna cost like $50 and not taste good.

Nah, it just has a few stout pints in it.

Lol I'm imagining someone eating a McDonald's hamburger and drinking from a bottle of wine screaming "it's stew!"

Serious Eats has a phenomenal (albeit labor intensive) recipe for beef stew. I've made it three times and all three times have been the best stew I've ever eaten. And that's certainly not to toot my own horn, I've made mediocre beef soup as you call it, and every other iteration of mediocre stew.

It sounds like there might not be much in your stew to thicken it. The beef fat helps a bit, but you can toss the beef chunks in flour to give the stew a bit more body. This recipe I used just straight up has you add some unflavored powdered gelatin to it to give you that coating-the-back-of-a-spoon texture.

I’ve used red wine and beef in dishes together in the past. Usually you just need something a little salty to balance the sweetness out. The UK condiment marmite usually does the trick for me, although soy sauce can work in a pinch.