Beef Bourguignon Made Easy?

By Nikki Berglund
Staff Writer

For months I have been eyeing my Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” whose purchase, I admit, was inspired by the movie “Julie and Julia.” A tad cheesy, maybe but that movie really makes a girl want to cook some French food!

I think what may have been deterring me previously was all of that butter and in the case of the recipe below, baconey deliciousness. This is not our usual style of cooking at home, not because it isn’t ridiculously decadent but it is just really isn’t all that good for you.

But with autumn suddenly here, we decided what better time to try the infamous beef bourguignon ala Julia Childs, described by the master herself as “one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man.”

Also, I was having a hankering for some French wines which seem engineered to pair perfectly with the dishes from their same place of origin.

As Paul and I glanced over the original recipe, it looked a little difficult and labor-intensive. With a rare Sunday afternoon completely free though, we decided now was the time to go for it.

Admittedly, to help simplify some of the directions, we referred to Ina Garten’s (aka Barefoot Contessa) version, which not only called for more familiar ingredients but also omitted some of the copious amounts of butter used in Julia’s recipe.

Beef Bourguignon

(Beef Stewed in Red Wine, with Bacon, Onions, and Mushrooms)
***denotes any adaptations from the Ina Garden recipe (courtesy of The Food Network)

1 6-ounce piece of chunk bacon/ 8oz apple wood smoked bacon, diced***
3 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
3 pounds lean stewing beef, cut into 2-inch cubes
1 carrot, sliced/1 lb carrots sliced diagonally into 1 inch chunks***
1 onion, sliced
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons flour
3 cups red wine, young and full-bodied (like Beaujolais, Cotes du Rhone or Burgundy) /whole bottle***
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups brown beef stock
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 cloves mashed garlic
1/2 teaspoon thyme
A crumbled bay leaf
18 to 24 small white onions, brown braised in stock (separate recipe if needed)/ Ina throws hers right in without braising, same goes for the mushrooms***
1 pound quartered, fresh mushrooms, sautéed in butter (separate recipe if needed)

Remove bacon rind and cut into lardons. Simmer rind and lardons for 10 minutes in 1 1/2 quarts water.

Drain and dry.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Sauté lardons in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a flameproof casserole over moderate heat for 2 to 3 minutes to brown lightly. Remove to a side dish with a slotted spoon.

Dry beef in paper towels; it will not brown if it is damp. Heat fat in casserole until almost smoking.
Add beef, a few pieces at a time, and sauté until nicely browned on all sides. Add it to the lardons.

In the same fat, brown the sliced vegetables. Pour out the excess fat.

Return the beef and bacon to the casserole and toss with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.

Then sprinkle on the flour and toss again to coat the beef lightly. Set casserole uncovered in middle position of preheated oven for 4 minutes.

Toss the meat again and return to oven for 4 minutes (this browns the flour and covers the meat with a light crust).

Remove casserole and turn oven down to 325 degrees.

Stir in wine and 2 to 3 cups stock, just enough so that the meat is barely covered.

Add the tomato paste, garlic, herbs and bacon rind. Bring to a simmer on top of the stove.

Cover casserole and set in lower third of oven. Regulate heat so that liquid simmers very slowly for 3 to 4 hours. The meat is done when a fork pierces it easily.

Wash out the casserole and return the beef and lardons to it. Distribute the cooked onions and mushrooms on top.

Skim fat off sauce in saucepan. Simmer sauce for a minute or 2, skimming off additional fat as it rises.

You should have about 2 1/2 cups of sauce thick enough to coat a spoon lightly.

If too thin, boil it down rapidly. If too thick, mix in a few tablespoons stock. Taste carefully for seasoning.

Pour sauce over meat and vegetables. Cover and simmer 2 to 3 minutes, basting the meat and
vegetables with the sauce several times.

Serve in casserole, or arrange stew on a platter surrounded with potatoes, noodles or rice, and decorated with parsley. ***We served ours Ina Garden style with grilled bread to dip in the stew.

A note on the “bacon rind”…it didn’t happen. I don’t even know where you would get the kind of bacon that has one of these so it was omitted in all steps of our recipe. Don’t worry; you will definitely get your share of bacon and bacon fat without it!

We found small white onions in the frozen foods section of our grocery store. According to Julia the onion and carrots are for flavor only and are taken out later in the recipe. In Ina’s version there are a lot more carrots (yum) and they are left in the finished product- we went in this direction to really give it a little more stewish quality.

My personal feeling on the French wine selection in Fargo is that although it has improved over the years, we are still severely lacking.

If you are new to French wine, drinking a Beaujolais Village is an unintimidating place to start. This easy-to-drink, light, usually red wine is usually consumed young and is often fairly inexpensive. With its low tannins and high acidity it is a pleasant food wine. George Duboeuf Beaujolais Village makes a great starter wine at $10.99.

My favorite inexpensive French food wine is a Cotes du Rhone. These wines from the Rhone region of France can be red, white, or rose but red is best with this dish.

The primary grape used in these wines is Grenache which can be described as earthy, spicy, or peppery with full body but not a lot of acidity.

I love Cotes du Rhône wines because they are consistent in their quality and taste. Often they can be found at a decent price point with superior quality. I love Parallel 45, a great Cotes du Rhone at around $13 a bottle.

If you want to get a little fancy with your beef stew, try the Michel Picard Chateauneuf-du-Pape at $37 per bottle. This elegant, full-bodied wine, also from the Rhone region, is made up predominantly of Grenache and pairs fantastically well with beef.

Whether this is something we will ever make again or not remains to be seen. Even with our hybrid version, I think we used more butter in that recipe than we usually use in a month. What was more important, though, was the fun we had challenging ourselves to make it, which to me is sometimes the best part about cooking.

Between you and me, though, and I hope I am not being blasphemous here, the next time we might just stick to the Cooking Light version of beef stew we made last winter, which I recall was just as delicious and waaaay healthier!

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