Bœuf à la Bourguignonne

It’s in the oven right now. And I can’t wait. Cooking coq-au-vin after seeing Alton Brown’s take on the dish has been on my mind for quite some time now, but I never got around to making it (shame on me). However, this past weekend I sat down with my family and watched Julie & Julia and I decided that I had to make Beef Bourguignon for Christmas Eve.

hope mine looks like this...

I could rattle on about the history, but it would be easier for you to read the wiki. So, I will instead go over my method (with pics, yay!) and finish off the post after dinner tonight.

a short history

As all google searches for Beef Bourguignon will tell you, the dish started out as peasant food and moved its way up into ‘haute cuisine’ as techniques and recipes were refined. You can generalize this dish as one of many varieties of a fricassee — a dish that starts with browning meat, then deglazing/stewing the meat with aromatics and vegetables in wine and broth and then finally reducing the liquid to make a thick gravy.

I think what definitely sets this dish apart from other fricassees is the meat. Farm-raised cattle always yield some really delectible cuts and as the fires of industry have helped automate farming, meat has become less flavorful. In fact, the ideal cut for coq-au-vin is an aged rooster because of the flavor the meat develops; however, since its not efficient to keep a chicken alive for more than a few months, practical alternatives are limited to thighs and breasts. This is where beef can take its rightful place as the king of meats. With enough connective tissue and spongeability, beef makes an ideal stewing meat (as do goats, lambs and sheep).

julia’s recipe

my method

The alterations I made to dear Mrs. Child’s perfect recipe stemmed from a few sources: Alton Brown’s Coq-au-Vin, minimizing work and cleanup, and madness.  Here’s what I did:

preparation work

1. mushrooms (~1 lb cramini)
   1. wipe with paper towel — don’t wash them or they soak up water…in fact, if you want to wash them, do so with broth, haha
   2. snap off stem and slice — in retrospect I would quarter them; I’m indifferent about using the stems
2. white pearl onions (~35 since we <3 onions)
   1. cut off the base root with sharp knife and make small “x”
   2. ‘blanche’ in hot water for 1-2 mins, take out and shock in ice water — after a minute in ice water you will be able to squeeze them and they pop right out
   3. mistakes I made: (1) I planned on using 24 pearl onions, but my brother said, “you can never have too many onions,” and so I decided to blanche the rest…AFTER blanching the pork rind. BIG mistake, after shocking the onions there was a small film of pork fat which made it hard to squeeze the onions out. Next time, if you buy a lot of pearl onions and are thinking about not using all of them…don’t. You can NEVER have too many onions. (2) When you make the small “x”…and I do mean small…make sure it’s small. If you make a large “X” then when you squeeze the onion, you will end up squeezing a small, small thing out and the rest of the onion layers will fall apart
3. beef (3 lbs chuck roast, 2″ cubes)
   1. dry thoroughly with paper towels
4. pork fat (0.68 lbs salt pork with some visible meat)
   1. Julia likes bacon. Alton likes salt pork. I like both. I picked a piece of salt pork with a good amount of meat on it and sliced off the meat to immitate Julia’s “pork rind” and I sliced up the white salt pork into matchstick-sized pieces, aptly called lardons
5. aromatics
   1. cut white onion into 6 chuncks; snap 2 medium-sized carrots and stalks of celery in half. had small bowl with 1-2 Tb of tomato paste, 1/2 tsp of dried thyme, 2 cloves crushed garlic and 1 bay leaf
6. preheat oven to 450° F

cooking

After all the aforementioned items were assembled, I started cooking in a “casserole dish” as Julia would call it…I call it a “La Creuset”.  Another change I would make (suggestion from my co-worker) is to use a Straub casserole dish because it has a rough enamel coating, which allows for better meat browning and seasoning over time, and the lid has the self-basting stalactites when vapor condenses on the inside of the lid.  Fortunately, the meat was pretty much covered with liquid and I used pork fat, so it still turned out amazingly.

I first sweated out the fat from the lardons over medium-high heat on the stove.  I had it covered for 10 minutes as the dish takes long to heat up and it heats up faster with the lid on.  I removed the lid and waited until the bubbling (oil + water) slowed.  I then removed the lardon to a dish and let the fat heat up almost to its smoking point.  I then browned the beef a few pieces at a time (for 3 lbs it took 4 batches since I didn’t want to crowd the pot) and removed them to the same dish.  With still a lot of fat and fond in the pan, I sautéed the pearl onions for 5 minutes over medium heat and then removed them to a separate dish.  I then sautéed the sliced mushrooms for ~10 minutes over medium heat to soak up all the goodness.  Since the mushrooms left some water, I let that reduce down and re-form the fond.  I then tipped out the fat and returned the now shriveled lardons and now browned beef to the casserole.  I tossed with flour, salt and pepper as Julia recommends and baked in the preheated oven for 8 minutes uncovered (taking it out to toss once midway through).  After taking it out, I turned the oven down to 325° F.

I then took out the dish and added all the aromatics that Julia recommends (I went a little heavier on the tomato paste) plus 3/4 bottle of italian dry red wine (I KNOW — “BURGUNDY”, but Whole Foods didn’t have any — wtf — so sommelier recommended this one that she uses to cook fricassees) and broth to almost cover everything.  I also rearranged the contents so the meat was on top and the veggies on the bottom, and then into the oven it went (covered) for 3 hours.  During this time, I moved the cooled mushrooms and onions to the fridge and then took a nap or something.

I checked up on it after 30 minutes to make sure it was at a simmer (it was a little too bubbly so I turned it down to 315º F) and checked it every hour.  I think it may have benefitted from longer cooking, but this was my first time so I’ll try 4 hours next time to see the result.  I like the beef to fall apart in the mouth, which it did, but it still had some chew to it (which my brother and dad liked).

After removing the dish from the oven and tasting it (SO good), I proceeded to remove the beef to a dish and remove the vegetables and lardons to a garbage bowl with a slotted spoon, leaving the liquid behind.  I cranked up the stove so that I can reduce the liquid by a third (good tip: take a wooden spoon and dip it into the liquid and then take a rubber band to mark off the original height of the liquid…you’ll know 1/3 when you keep poking it into the pan and see the level start to fall).

I put the beef and the reduced sauce into the fridge after they cooled.  To reheat before serving, I tossed the mushrooms and onions, beef pieces and the sauce into a pot and slowly warmed everything over medium-low heat until nice and hot.  I served them over some buttered fettucini pasta; I was going to use linguini, but I found the ribbons were too thin to my liking and opted for a thicker cut.

It was awesome.

pics

vids

julia & julia beef bourguignon report by abc

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