Beef Stew with Dumplings

Beef stew is a true servants’ dish: cooked low and slow, hard to spoil, and filling for hungry bellies. This version comes with rib-sticking dumplings, so it’s a real meal in a pot. It features several times on Downton Abbey, both as a dish in the servants’ hall and at the soup kitchen, where it is set up for starving and injured soldiers in the episodes set during the Great War. The secret is to have a cut, such as brisket, that has some fat with it and that will benefit from long c