Beef bourguignon is just a great comfort food. You might think because of the name that the dish is too fancy and complex to make at home. Tasting the rich and intense flavor of this dish might reinforce that thought. All that being said, the ingredients are fairly basic. The beef is braised in red wine and includes some herbs, carrots, mushrooms, garlic, and onions. This dish is just the French version of a beef stew. This recipe may turn out to be your favorite version for a beef stew and I am sure it will soon become one of your favorite comfort food dishes to make! Our version also includes some bacon lardons (another word for bacon cut into small pieces – fancy…right?) As the saying goes, “Everything is better with bacon!”
There is one main requirement you need to follow when making this dish. That is you need to allow enough time for the ingredients to all come together to develop the intense flavors you expect and for the meat to become tender. To ensure that we succeed and to help the process, we are going to use the sous vide.
Let’s Sous Vide!
Do you have to use sous vide for my recipe? You do not! This dish has been around way before technology came into the picture. If you haven’t yet jumped into this type of cooking, you can do the following; start off by marinating your meat. Salt and pepper the beef and place it in a non-reactive bowl; add some wine and some herbs and let sit for a couple of hours. Strain and save the marinating liquid before searing your meat. You will want to use the liquid as part of your sauce. Then follow the recipe directions. You are definitely going to need to add some additional time to cook. After a couple of hours of cooking time, check your meat so as to not overcook.
So why use sous vide? Typically when cooking many types of beef or pork stew, we would be using a cheaper cut of meat as in our case a chuck roast. These types of roasts can be more flavorful because of all the internal marbling and collagen. However, they are also a tougher cut of meat because of all their connective tissue which requires a longer cooking time at a lower heat for the meat to break down and make tender. Using the sous vide process will allow me to cook my meat at a consistent temperature over a long period of time obtaining a melt in your mouth texture with no chance of overcooking.
Since using the sous vide will require me to cook my meat for a long time, why not simplify things and cook the meat while I am sleeping. Sounds good! We will just cut our chuck roast into bite-size pieces; add some salt and pepper, some herbs, and a 1/4 cup of wine; vacuum seal everything, and cook overnight to achieve some perfectly tender beef for our beef bourguignon!
Check here for further discussion of using the Sous Vide Process and for additional recipes!
Tell Me More About the Dish
After we sous vide the meat, we will add it to a hot cast iron pan to get a good sear. You need to make sure you dry the meat first before you add it to the pan. We don’t want to steam the meat so don’t crowd the pan. Cook in as many batches as you need.
What About the Sauce?
Any great “stew” needs a great sauce. The backbone for our dish is a whole bottle of red wine. Cooking wine over a long period of time with the rest of the ingredients helps develop that rich flavor of our sauce. A French Burgundy wine is suggested for this dish which would be Pinot Noir. Can you use a different full-bodied red wine? Sure…the end result may be a little different. Nevertheless, your dish will be great. I also like to use a little bit of B & B (Brandy and Benedictine Liquor) to deglaze the pan after we sear the meat. Just another ingredient to layer additional flavors to our dish.
Additional Thoughts
What if my sauce is too thick or too wet? Most of the thickening of our sauce will occur by slowly reducing the liquid over low heat. To help that along we will add some corn starch to “dust” the beef before it gets seared. We will also add a couple of packets of unflavored gelatin. I got this hint from a recipe I read from J. Kenji López-Alt on Serious Eats. I am always picking up some great hints from his blog. If your sauce is too thick just add a little broth or water to get the consistency you prefer.
If you want a nice presentation, get some bread bowls to layer in the stew. Two great sides would be mashed potatoes or polenta. You can’t go wrong no matter how you serve this dish. Check here for my recipe for polenta.
Let me know how you and your family enjoy this recipe by commenting below. And as always, thanks for Spending Time in My Kitchen!