Cooking recipe: bœuf bourguignon
Just remembered that a personal blog isn't complete without a cooking segment and since I intended to make a batch of bourguignon today, here we go. But first, let me present some of its advantages:
- My favourite dish by far, ambrosia got nothing on it.
- Easy to make in large quantities.
- Handles freezing very well (goes hand in hand with the previous point, obviously).
- Fast unless you count the stewing time (which requires no attention).
- Originally a pauper dish, can be made cost efficient by choosing lower quality meat/cuts and replacing half the wine with water.
Ingredients
| Quantity | Ingredient |
|---|---|
| 2.5 kg | beef chuck/shank/cheek |
| 4 | medium~large onions |
| 600 g | smoked bacon |
| 1.5 L (2 btl.) | Burgundy wine (or any dry/strong red wine, I suppose) |
| 2 | beef stock cubes |
| 2 | bouquets garnis; those dried bundles of laurel and thyme |
| 200 g | concentrated tomato paste |
| 4 tbsp. | wheat flour |
| 3 squares | very dark chocolate (≥ 85%) |
| 6 | carrots |
Optionally, you can also add 3~4 garlic cloves. You'll also want some fat (butter, oil) available to use the pan without getting anything stuck/burnt. And salt/pepper to your taste.
Of course, these are approximate quantities. You can replace (or augment, if you want to stew it longer but lack liquid) some of the wine with water.
Tools
- Large pot
- Pan
- Stove (one hob)
- At least two other large bowls/containers
- Something to uncork the wine (duh)
- All the usual stuff (knives, peeler, spatula, etc…)
For temperature reference, my stove is induction powered and its power dial goes up to 10 (9+"Turbo").
Recipe
 | 1. Slice the carrots and put them in a bowl for later. |
 | 2. Slice the bacon and put it in the pan. |
 | 3. Slice the onions and put them in another bowl for later. Protip: use a lateral fan to lessen the tears. |
 | 4. Grill the sliced bacon while stirring often. Stove on 8. |
 | 5. Put the grilled bacon in the pot. |
 | 6. Add a chunk of butter or some oil in the pan. |
 | 7. Cook the onions until they're translucent and golden. Add more butter/oil if it sticks. Stove on 7. |
 | 8. Put the browned onions in the pot, with the bacon. I usually clean my only pan at that point, too. |
 | 9. Unpack your meat and cut it in large dice (at most 1.5"). If your butcher is nice, like mine, he'll have done that for you =). |
 | 10. Lightly sear (only to get the colour to change) the meat. This is kind of the hard part because you must take care not to cook more than the very surface, so pay attention; it won't matter if there's a bit of pink/red remaining. Do so in batches of this approximate size to help managing the cooking speed and add butter with each. Stove on 6. |
 | 11. Put each resulting batch in the pot. |
 | 12. Sprinkle your wheat flour on the meat and mix a bit to cover the chunks. It helps keep the flavour inside during stewing and thickens the sauce. |
 | 13. Add all the remaining ingredients except the chocolate to your cauldron, including the salt/pepper. |
 | 14. At last, close the pot and let it stew at low temperature (stove on 3) for as long as you want (at least 5 hours, I'd say), stirring a few times per hour. When you reach the right meat consistency - personally, I wait until it can be broken with the dull wooden spatula - open the pot and put the stove on 4 to let water evaporate until the sauce has the wanted thickness. |
And that's it, let it cool a bit and apply the family secret my mom gave me: add the dark chocolate and mix well. The slight touch of sugar gives the final taste a nice contrast and the sauce clings even tighter to the meat/side dish.
Serve with pasta (fresh pasta if you can). I recommend the kind with lots of nooks and crannies that doesn't splash around too much (the sauce stains violently) like fusili or radiatori.
