In-Depth Guide: Boeuf Bourguignon
This is one of my all time favorite things to cook. I've said it before - I LOVE rustic French peasant food - anything cooked with love and slaved over for hours is exactly the type of food I like to cook for my friends & family. It can be a little daunting, but I've spread the preparation of this recipe out over 2 days so it's a little less terrifying. You can totally make it in one day, however - just be prepared to start at like 2pm to serve dinner at 6.
This dish is SO good, in fact, that it's the very first thing Julia Child prepared on her cooking show, the French Chef.
Now it needs to be said that i'm a little obsessed with Julia - so much so, in fact, that I went as Zombie Julia this last Halloween.
Tranny shenanigans aside, I've taken Boeuf Bourguignon and lightened it up a bit (as much as it really can be lightened, anyway). I don't use any roux or beurre meuniere, rather, I thicken the sauce by reducing cooking liquid and adding a puree of the cooking vegetables. I also brighten up the flavors with an awesome herb, garlic & horseradish creme fraiche.
And he Cooks Boeuf Bourguignon
food processor or a potato masher/fork & someone you don't like
3lbs high quality stewing beef (grass fed chuck is best) cut into large bite sized chunks
1 liter low sodium beef broth
1 bottle good red wine (cabernet or malbec is my fave here)
1 large onion, or 2 medium ones, peeled and cut into chunks
2 carrots, peeled and cut in to chunks
3 sticks celery, cut into chunks
Lots of fresh rosemary (1 package is enough)
Lots of fresh thyme (1 package is enough)
1/2 lb Cippolini onions, peeled
3 medium size beets, peeled
3-4 parsnips, cut in half lengthwise
3-4 cloves roasted garlic
1 small package creme fraiche
1 small tub creme fraiche
2 tbsp prepared horseradish
Heat up some oil on medium-high in the large pot and pat your beef dry. Dry beef browns better than wet beef! Once the oil is hot add the beef with plenty of room in between each chunk.
Once it's in the pot, LEAVE IT BE. Don't mix it around, just let it sit and brown. With a pair of tongs, lift up a piece and see if it looks like this:
if it does, you're ready to flip over your chunks and brown the other side. Once browned, remove from the pot put on a plate or in a bowl. Then, keep going with more and more beef until you've browned it all off.
See these beauties? These brown friends that have clung to our pot? We love them. They're flavor. I wish they came in a jar.
To get them off the bottom of the pot and into our bellies, we add the carrots, onions & celery from our recipe into the pot, still on medium high heat.
They'll soon start to pick up that wonderful deliciousness.
Now, add your beef and whatever liquid has leeched out of it on top of the vegetables and add your garlic, 2 sprigs of rosemary, and 2 sprigs of thyme.
Then, add your beef broth and red wine.
Bring to the boil. Reduce and keep at a low simmer with the lid off for 2.5 hours.
Once the 2.5 hours have passed, remove the pot from the head and strain out the beef and vegetables, reserving the broth.
Set the beef and vegetables aside in a bowl. Put the reserved liquid through a seive/strainer and into a wide sautee pan. On high heat, reduce the liquid by half.
Once reduced, You can stop the whole process, throw everything in the fridge, & continue tomorrow. Or, you keep going. You ambitious champ, you.
Now, pick through the strained beef and vegetables and separate the beef into its own bowl, the vegetables into their own bowl, and any woody herb stems into a garbage bowl.
You'll be left with a bowl of beef:
And a bowl of vegetables. Put the vegetables right in to the food processor and puree them up (or mash them really, really well)
take your reserved, reduced cooking liquid
and add it back to a large pot with the beef & vegetable puree.
bring up to a simmer, then cover and let sit on low heat. Now's your time to season! taste it. If you think it should be reduced a little more, up the heat a bit. Add as much salt and pepper as you'd like.
At this point, I like to add a little of this - but be VERY sparing with it - it's incredibly strong. Start with a teaspoon and work your way up to the point where you can just barely taste it in the background.
Now, with your beef mellowing out on the stove, it's time to roast off some root vegetables, cippolini onions & potatoes.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
For this I used one little sautee pan, one big roasting pan, and one large sautee pan.
Throw the peeled beets into the microwave in a bowl on high for 5-6 mins to get a head start on cooking. They're so much harder than the other veg that you need to give them a bit of a head start.
With the beets nuked, cut them in half and add them to a roasting pan with a little olive oil. add the parsnips too, then season with salt & pepper. Throw a couple of unpeeled cloves of garlic in along with a sprig each of rosemary & thyme. Throw them in to start roasting.
Potatoes? similar treatment.
Olive oil, salt, pepper. Cut side down so they brown nice.
Throw them in to roast too.
Put a little water in the small sautee pan with the onions, as well as some olive oil, salt & pepper. Put them in the oven as well.
Now, with our veg roasting, it's time to make our creme fraiche.
Mince up the leaves of the tarragon, along with a pinch of thyme and rosemary (to brighten up and echo the flavours already built into the dish.
Add the roasted garlic and horseradish, season with salt & pepper.
then whiz it up and set aside.
Now, slice up your bacon into small strips and get it in to a pan to cook off, until crispy.
Drain the bacon & set it aside.
Your vegetables should be ready about now - test them and see if they're golden brown & fork tender.
Lay the potatoes, parsnips & beets in the bottom of a nice large bowl (or a pasta plate)
on top of that, add the onions, then the beef stew, then a handful of crispy bacon and finally some fresh chopped parsley. Top with a dollop of the creme fraiche.
the best part about making something like this at home?
YOU CAN EAT IT WITH YOUR PANTS OFF.
Now pour yourself a glass of wine, and pat yourself on the back. You've done me, & Julia Child, proud.
