Beef Bourguignonne
Ingredients
- 750mL red wine (Beaujolais-Villages works well)
- six carrots
- 15 medium onions
- two stalks celery
- two cloves garlic
- 4 Tablespoons butter
- 1 Tablespoon tomato paste
- 2 Tablespoons flour
- 125g salt pork or bacon
- four sprigs thyme
- four sprigs parsley
- two bay leaves
- fifteen whole peppercorns
- Salt, pepper to taste
Procedure
- Make a bouquet garni: wrap peppercorns, parsley, thyme, and bay leaves in cheesecloth and tie to ensure they don't escape.
- Skin onions but leave them whole.
- Chop bacon or salt pork coarsley.
- Peel and section carrots.
- Chop celery.
- In a large cast iron pot over medium-high heat, melt four tablespoons of butter and fry the salt pork or bacon until lightly brown.
- Remove the salt pork/bacon, leaving the fat. In the fat over medium-high temperature, brown the whole onions, just the ends will be fine. Remove the onions.
- Pat the meat dry and brown the meat in the same fat.
- When meat is brown on all sides, turn heat to low and re-add onion, carrots, celery, bouquet garni. Cover and simmer 20min.
- After a 20min simmer, remove all solids from the pan, and you should have juice in the bottom. Make a roux with a small amount of the juice and the flour, then introduce the roux to the rest of the liquid and whisk over medium heat until thickened, perhaps four minutes.
- Add tomato paste to liquid.
- Add garlic to liquid.
- Whisk until all lumps of tomato paste and flour (if any) are gone.
- Turn temperature to low. Pour in 1/3rd of a bottle of wine. Whisk to dislodge any stuck material on the bottom.
- Add everything back to the pan.
- Add the rest of the bottle of wine. Cover and allow cooking to proceed on a low simmer for at least 3.5 hours, stirring once an hour or so. Be gentle and stir infrequently.
- After the meat is very tender and the stew cooked to your liking, adjust seasoning. It probably needs more salt, since salt is best done after the cooking, not before.
- Allow it to cool, then transfer, in pot, to refrigerator. When it is fully cold, a 0.25in layer of fat will have solidified at the top. Get rid of all this fat, or at least as much as is convenient without destroying the good stuff.
- Reheat and serve.
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